Xenomorph
by KillerGeishaYumi
Summary: The first fifteen years of Hiccup's life are nothing compared to the nightmare of a close encounter with THEIR kind. Modern. Not a crossover with the Alien movie series, in spite of the cover image, but the dragons bear a superficial resemblance to the aliens in that series. Rated M because I really don't know where this is going and it could get a bit nasty.
1. Prologue

They should have known it was too good to be true.

When Berk was first discovered and settled, everything went well. The houses went up quickly and were modernized in short order. Farms were built, the fishing and hunting were found to be good, and trade routes were established. In short, in less than a month the small wild island was completely inhabited and could have stood off the coast of any major 21st-century city.

Trouble, when it hit, came at sunset on the night of the first nearly-full moon. Every power source for every known electronic device started fluctuating at random: strange sounds came from every speaker, as though receiving signals from an unknown satellite or radio. Communications with the fishing boats were lost; one went missing altogether and the rest fumbled their way back to port with meager catches. The sailors had strange stories to tell, of giant creatures in the water that looked like crocodiles but behaved like sharks – but no one believed them, and everyone simply went to bed with the promise to search for the missing craft by day.

The next morning brought more surprises. Animals put out for the night vanished without a trace; trash cans were overturned and anything with obvious plant or animal origins had been carried off; strange, birdlike footprints were found in yards. Communications were working again, so a search was organized for the missing ship. They found it lodged among the nearby sea stacks – completely deserted, every scrap of wood stripped away and all the food and leather supplies gone. All the lifeboats were accounted for, and aside from the broken plastic crates (which could have meant anything) there was no sign of a struggle. The sailors had not willfully abandoned ship, nor had they been the slightest bit prepared to resist whatever had attacked them.

That night the same thing happened again. This time, people stayed up and watched out their windows, looking for the strange creatures that had so brazenly raided them the night before. With the only reliable light being moonlight, all anyone saw were moving shadows – shadows as big as large men, moving rapidly on all fours and twitching long muzzles this way and that.

One man said, about a creature that practically came right up to his house and peered in the window, "It looked like a dragon, or something."

The second fishing ship to go missing washed up on the shore the next morning, completely wrecked and smoldering. Deep scratches marred every floor and most of the walls, and there was blood everywhere. Lodged behind a chair was a severed forelimb – a wing-like arm and hand with a pincer-claw as thumb and forefinger, and covered in green scales.

There was simply no question at that point: these were dragons, or something enough like dragons to deserve the name. And they were hungry, and more inclined to raid than hunt.

The raids continued for a total of five nights, and then stopped. Weeks went by as people looked out their windows in fear that a dragon would be staring back at them; then they decided that the creatures had moved on and went on with their lives, certain that there would be no more raids.

Thus is tragedy written as a pattern is realized too late. The raids had not ended: they simply only happened on the full moon and the nights around it. The Mayor's wife was stolen away on the second night of the second raid; heartbroken, but fiercely stubborn, he legally changed his name to Stoick in honor of what she always called him and declared war on the dragons.

"If they want a fight, we'll be ready for them! Never surrender!"

* * *

The war continued for fifteen years. The dragons attacked every full moon, from three to five nights in a row depending on if the nights two days before and two days after were overcast or clear. For the three nights directly surrounding the full moon, it didn't matter if there were clouds. Every raid the townsfolk rushed to meet the dragons in battle (firearms versus firepower), giving as good as they got and refusing to budge an inch.

Between the raids, dragon corpses were studied and classified by the best ways to defeat their living counterparts; tentatively it was decided that there were six classes based on long-range breath weapons and physical characteristics. They stopped using wood altogether in construction, since the dragons kept ripping it off. Organic waste was carted away from town, so that the dragons would stop raiding trash cans – and it took about five years, but the invaders eventually figured out that the fancy cans no longer held compostable (and therefore even remotely edible) materials and stopped digging in them.

Stoick also funded expeditions to find the dragons' nest. If the nest was destroyed, surely the dragons would find another home – one much farther from Berk and therefore not worth the effort of flying all the way out simply to steal food. For fifteen years, there was no luck. The dragons seemed to materialize out of nowhere and vanish without any trace. Putting trackers on captured dragons and letting them escape didn't work – the trackers broke the minute their carriers disappeared.

Some of the more fanciful (or superstitious) believed that the dragons lived on another planet altogether, or in another dimension. Stoick dismissed these notions in public, but secretly wondered how anything like these destructive monsters could exist long enough for their population to grow to its estimated size _without being discovered by the original survey team._ Or perhaps they had been discovered, and the politicians had given Berk to the people opposed to them so that the local wildlife could kill them off. These settlers were certainly just about the most intractable bunch of hillbillies on the face of the earth as far as personalities went – and there was no answer to the repeated calls for help when they first realized that they were up against something that might require a full military.

The new Berkians were stranded; if they were to survive, they had to do it on their own.

* * *

_**Author's Note:**__ this fanfiction will be written from Hiccup's point of view until further notice._

* * *

I couldn't believe it. Hickory Harrison Haddock the third, crushed to death under a pile of meat. The weight was unbearable; I could hardly move. And the stench…the fans weren't doing enough to clear the smell away.

Finally I managed to turn my head enough so that my jaw could move more-or-less unhindered. "Fisher, can you get up? I think it's done exploding now."

"Just a minute," the pile of meat answered, "Let the circulation get the worst of the smoke out."

At least he moved a bit, making it easier to breathe.

Fisher and I are buddies. Mostly. At least, I'm better friends with him right now than with the other surviving kids my age. When I wanted to pull out the old chemistry set and make some kind of potent dragon poison, Fisher was the guy to come along and lend a hand. Trouble was, he'd never been all that small, and his recent growth spurt had given him the approximate dimensions of an overstuffed armchair: he was simply more hindrance than help in a laboratory.

Of course, when two ingredients came together and made a massive explosion, he was a very effective human shield.

Eventually Fisher stood up. "I'm pretty sure that wasn't supposed to happen."

"Clearly." Not even Fisher was spared from my snarky humor.

"No, I mean," and then he went into a chemical composition spiel that I only understood in the abstract form of _some of these ingredients were supposed to prevent these other ingredients from reacting off each other._ Then he looked at me and added, "How much soap did you put in?"

I shrugged. "Maybe a quarter cup? Soap cakes don't have dividing lines marked on their wrappers like butter sticks."

"Did you grind it into the measuring cup?"

"Grind it?"

Fisher looked at our workplace, which was covered in greasy black ash. Then he picked up a tool that could have been used to reduce a block of solid oak into sawdust, or stripped the peel off a potato in a matter of seconds.

I groaned. Of course, the soap wouldn't have dissolved fast enough in the mixture while it was still mostly solid, so it wouldn't have been much help with keeping the other agents from reacting. I had wondered about that when I first dropped the soap in – I hadn't even seen the grater – but by the time I thought of it the deed was done, and I couldn't fish it back out again.

"Your dad's not going to be very happy with this, is he?"

I shrugged bitterly. "Of course he's not going to be happy with this. He's never happy with any of my projects. He wants me to turn into Scott and chase dragons with battle-axes and not bother with witches' brews that keep blowing up…" I paused, waiting for Fisher to defend our chemistry.

He didn't speak. In fact, he didn't even move: he stayed perfectly still, staring at the door – that was letting cold air wash over my shoulders.

"…Did someone just come in here?"

He nodded.

My shoulders dropped. "It's my dad, isn't it?"

He nodded again.

I didn't want to turn around. I did anyway – if I didn't, he would likely take my shoulder and turn me around himself.

And there he was, all six foot nine and three hundred pounds of Mayor Stoick Haddock. His beard had grown out to his satisfaction not long ago, and the great red bushel of it made him look even bigger. His face was nearly as red as he looked around the mostly-empty storeroom that had been our laboratory.

"Yeah, I know, this looks really bad," I began, hoping to forestall the shouting, "But we're making progress on the recipe. I think it's even right now – there was just a mild preparation issue when I couldn't find the…"

"You do realize," he interrupted me, "That I have enough problems without having to clean up after your experiments? Winter is almost here and I have an entire village to feed!"

"I clean up my own…"

"Hiccup. If you want to get out there and be of some use against dragons, focus on gaining some muscle and get _strong_ enough! We've never found an effective dragon poison anyway, so you might as well use what we know works!"

I wanted to argue that nobody had ever really looked for one; the closest had been a couple of times when good-old-fashioned gasoline had been dumped over the pile of compostable rubbish (a trick that didn't work for some reason; must be the firebreaths). But the sound of my nickname put paid to that argument before it ever started.

Hiccup. A runt. A mistake in the natural order of the universe. Even my _dad_ thought that of me, and he at least loved me enough to lock me in my room during the monthly raids. Everyone else just wished some dragon would find me and carry me off.

Fisher called me Hick. Not a lot better, especially since I could tell it was a compromise in some ways.

"Clean up this storeroom." Dad's gaze went past me and he added, "Both of you."

"Yes, sir," Fisher said softly. None of this tirade was against him, of course; he was big enough to _be_ the guy my dad was talking about, although he lacked a lot of the necessary aggression.

Dad stood in the doorway long enough to see us pick up mops and brushes and start working, and then he shut us in to finish.

"At least that lecture was in private," I muttered into my mop handle as I worked it over the floor.

Fisher cringed. Then he pointed with a brush at the open window.

I turned and saw Scott's face grinning through the screen.

"What are you looking at?" I snarled, brandishing the mop as though I intended to slap the screen – and his face, which was conveniently pressed against it enough to distort his already ugly features – with the soggy rag-head. I really did think about it; it would be fun, since he couldn't retaliate, and I could cherish the memory for a couple of hours.

Of course, then he would track me down and use me for a punching bag.

"I've never seen anyone make that big a mess! Great job on the storeroom!"

"Thank you, I was trying, so…" I went back to work, hoping Scott would go away if I ignored him.

"You missed a spot."

Fisher threw one of his brushes at the screen. Judging by the sounds it made – and _didn't_ make – it hit the screen bristle-first but didn't hit Scott. He must have jumped back, because Fisher's aim was a little better than that.

At least he wouldn't be warping the screen anymore. Even Scott wasn't stupid enough to put his face on something dripping with strong detergent and who-knew-what-else.

"It was the Hiccup thing, wasn't it?" Fisher finally said a few minutes later.

"What?"

"You didn't go back to defending your poison."

"Oh. Yeah."

"Are things…worse at home?"

"Nah, no worse; we still barely make eye contact – and when we do, he's always got this disappointed scowl, like someone skimped on the meat in his sandwich."

"You're going to do the thing again, aren't you?"

I hadn't been – but it seemed like one of my better ways to blow off steam. I straightened up, puffed out my chest, and deepened my voice into a…okay impression of my dad's. "_Excuse me, Waitress! I'm afraid you brought me the wrong offspring! I ordered an extra-large boy with beefy arms, extra guts-and-glory on the side! This here – this is a talking fishbone!_"

Fisher chuckled dutifully at my impersonation. "I guess what it is, is…there's the warrior's way and there's the nerd's way. Your dad's a warrior; you're a nerd. And with no translator in the house – which is probably what your mom would have been – you two just don't have anything to talk about."

"Thank you for summing that up." I tried hard to keep the sarcasm out of my voice; just because I'd figured all that out a long time ago, doesn't mean I needed to take it out on Fisher. "How do you get on with your…" fortunately I managed to choke back the word _parents_ before it came out; he didn't have any at all, and was raised by an aunt and uncle.

"Not too bad; I'm kind of…both a warrior and a nerd, so at least I can talk their talk."

I shrugged. "Pity you don't live at my place. _You_ could be translator."

Fisher made a noise that could have been a laugh. If he was a sick seagull. "Your dad scares me. He always looks so…angry."

"He's looked angry since the day I was born – but I'm sure there's no connection." Despite the implications my sarcastic tone gave that pronouncement, it was actually a slight exaggeration: he didn't look angry in the photos of him, Mom, and newborn-baby-me.

It was in photos taken after Mom was taken away that he started looking angry all the time.

* * *

On the south coast of Berk stands a house where nobody lives. The outside is entirely brick and slate with metal doors, and I've heard that the only wood inside is a few doors hidden from the view of the small, reinforced windows. It's two stories tall with, I've heard, a basement floor; a nice respectable size for a family to live without bashing elbows at every turn. There _was_ a deck – but it was made of wood, and was torn away by dragons less than six months after it was built. Which is a shame in some ways, because that house has the best views of both sunsets and sunrises; most places in town only have charming views of the sunsets.

It's a nice house.

The place has been empty since the death of its first tenant.

I never knew Borden Belden personally, but I've heard that he had very bad luck. It's amazing his house is still standing. He was no kind of farmer – his flocks and crops were all stolen by dragons almost as soon as he had anything worth harvesting. He didn't have any talent blacksmithing, either, and had to give the forge to his brother. When he moved into that house on the coast, he had chosen to become a fisherman.

No one has ever been able to tell me _exactly_ what happened to Borden. All anyone knows is that, one day, he went completely mad. He wandered aimlessly around town, like he was trying to carry out his weekly shopping routine but could no longer remember what he was supposed to buy. He'd stopped sleeping; stopped caring for himself; started muttering about flying skeletons shrouded in black, appearing in his living room. _The Night Fury_, he said – a dragon that no one could kill, for it was already dead. A dragon for which locked doors were no concern, because it could waft through solid walls.

Saying that no one believed him was perhaps an exaggeration; too much had happened to everyone for something like that to be considered completely impossible. But they did say (in low voices) that perhaps he'd been left alone too much and he was starting to hallucinate that some unseen dragon was capable of more than it was.

Then one night everyone heard screams. Borden's screams, more animal than human anymore but still a voice raised in terror and distress. It was during another raid and no one was free to investigate at the time, but everyone wondered about his "Night Fury." The next morning when they went to check on him, the house was empty. Not even Willy, his last sheep, was anywhere on the premises. And there was no sign of forced entry.

The thought that an undead dragon really did exist and had penetrated this lonely house was more than anyone wanted to deal with. The house was left alone and rumors abounded that it was haunted by Borden's crazy ghost. A new entry was added to the dragon encyclopedia, with no pictures and only a few words:

"Night Fury: power, armor, and accuracy ratings unknown. The unholy offspring of morning mist and Death Itself. Never engage this dragon; your only chance is to hide and pray it does not find you."

I don't know if there is a Night Fury: no one has ever brought one down. Of all the dragons to show their faces, none of them look like "flying skeletons" and they all tend to leave evidence of their passing. If there is such a creature, though, it would undoubtedly be the greatest prize – worth far more in status, in sheer bragging rights, than all the other dragons put together. Whoever does that would be called Hero.

Maybe that's why my wanderings have been taking me closer and closer to that house.


	2. Mental Case

My whole body was in agony.

A hot core of pain seemed to vibrate and send waves through my torso, as though my solar plexus was a volcano thinking about erupting. My shoulders and hips throbbed in counterpoint rhythm to each other; needles of lightning stabbed my limbs from elbows and knees outward. As for my head…my skull had to have been split clean in half, for there to be this much pain inside it. As if that wasn't bad enough, all I could smell was blood.

I wondered what hit me.

That bothered me worse than all the pain put together, that I couldn't even remember how I'd gotten so badly hurt. Did I fall down a cliff – or off a building, or –

All the theories bouncing around in my aching head seemed to involve being outside.

Because…I was outside. A stiff wind was sweeping over me. And the ground under me…I couldn't feel much through the itching and burning of my hands, but that seemed to be sand – and there were rocks digging into my back, adding rather minimal pain to the rest of my torment.

Rocks and sand. That combination was only found on the beach.

I was outside, and on the beach.

Good. Now what?

Something was banging rather loudly, nearby. And that was a measure of how many of my neurons had been at least temporarily disabled by pain, that I didn't realize until now that the banging _wasn't_ a continuation of that pain but was rather part of the world around me.

Metal. That was a big piece of metal swinging. About the size and shape of – that's a door. A metal house door, hanging open and getting caught by the wind. Something must be wrong with it, for it to not close.

So I was on the beach, close to a house with a wonky door. Next.

I had to open my eyes. They'd nearly been glued shut, my eyelashes caked with dried blood, and they stabbed with pain almost worse than my fingertips, but I managed to pry them open.

At first all I could see was the cloudy sky, with sunlight coming from somewhere behind my head – confirmation number one: I really was outside, and it was either morning or evening. Then, slowly, I turned my head back and forth to see what was around me. Confirmation number two: on my left was an okay view of the ocean and on my right was more beach.

The house, evidently, was somewhere beyond my feet. I would have to sit up to see it.

My eyes hurt to open. My neck hurt to move. The rest of my body was pain incarnate already _without_ moving, so sitting up was going to be a torturous affair. I guess that makes it understandable that I didn't want to move, right?

Of course, option two was to just lie here forever. If the sun was going down, it would soon be night and I would freeze to death before morning – a fate that didn't sound so bad, considering how much I hurt right now; but if the sun was coming up, I would shortly begin to _really_ stink as the blood on my face (and possibly the rest of my body, I couldn't tell) started to warm up.

But I _really_ didn't want to move…

_So…is that midmorning or midafternoon, genius? Surely you can figure that out without having to look around again, even if your head's been broken in half._

Let's see. What little I could see of the ocean was to my left, and the sun was behind my head. If it was morning, I was on the north coast of Berk. Did it make sense that I would be there?

Not really. There were only about three months when Berk's north coast _wasn't_ covered in ice, and they'd ended about a month ago. If I were lying on ice, I wouldn't be throbbing in pain; I'd be numb.

_Numb is good…_

So I was on the south coast, and it was evening. That wasn't so bad. I would endure pain for a couple more hours, and then the sun would go down and it would get cold…I'd go numb and the pain would stop and –

Wait. South coast? _South?_ And the banging door –

My abdominal muscles screamed with agony and my arms and legs shook with the effort of pulling my weight, but I surged to a sitting position. My head rolled freely for a moment as a wave of dizziness met my effort; I sat there stiffly until my balance returned and my senses cleared to the level they'd been before (which, let me clarify, wasn't as clear as they normally were), and then I lifted my head.

The abandoned house of Bordon Belden loomed over me, its rusty front door swinging partially off its hinges. Looking down that dark entryway was like staring down the throat of a dragon…

A memory crashed over me – a phantom in the dark, a grinning skull with blazing eyes; a slinky body pressing down on me, claws gripping around my shoulders and hips, something like a tongue forcing its way down my throat…

I don't know if I screamed or not; I have _no idea_ how I got to my feet. But suddenly I was running for home, faster than I would have thought my legs could carry me in this state – I must have looked like a madman, but I didn't care in the slightest if anyone saw me. My brain was afire with just one thought: _get back to civilization_.

I actually had almost calmed down by the time I got home. Then the front door swung open under my shove and banged into the wall, and I nearly lost it again at the déjà vu the noise triggered. I fought the door closed and turned around –

To see my dad come rushing around the corner, his eyes widening in shock at my disheveled, bloody state.

"WHAT THE HELL?"

* * *

Those three words must have knocked me out, because the next thing I remember – clearly – is waking up in a hospital bed. Staring at the ceiling, probing the depths of my own head, I decided that I'd been tanked up on drugs here for at least a week while nameless people in scrubs tried to get some answers out of me about what had happened. Every time I started to go loco – seemed that the memory had an extraordinary amount of trauma attached to it, imagine that – I'd earn another dose and be sent back to La-La Land for a few hours.

Just trying to think about what had happened was making my heart rate go up, if that annoying machine was anything to go by.

"Hickory?"

I looked at the door.

Gordon. In all his one-armed, peg-legged glory.

Somehow, seeing him was making me self-conscious. I was grateful that someone had cleaned me up, at least: this conversation would be awkward enough without the stench of blood permeating the room.

He shuffled in and sat down next to my bed, punching a couple buttons to sit me up. "How are you doing?"

"Okay, I guess." Was that my voice? It was hardly a whisper; I was louder when I was stoned into incoherent mumbles.

"You've been here almost a week."

"Uh-huh."

"Missed a lot of school; you'd be behind if you hadn't already been ahead."

"Mm."

Not only was my volume way lower than usual, but my word count was down: I was usually much chattier than this. Did I still have drugs in my system? Would I feel this…tense inside if I were on drugs? Surely everything I was on was more in the line of relaxants…did someone slip something else into…

"By the way, you're not pregnant."

My head jerked up like it was on a string, and I gaped at Gordon. "What?" It wasn't quite a yelp, but it was considerably more than a whisper.

Was that a joke?

Gordon smirked a little. "I wondered if that would get a rise out of you." Then he went back to serious. "You've had every kind of scan that a doctor can use on a human body – ever since they figured out what it was you were so afraid had happened when you encountered that dragon. You're clean."

The memory flared in my mind again, and something snapped in my chest. "Oh, _gods_…" I covered my face with both hands as tears poured from my eyes; it hurt a bit to sob, but sob I did as Gordon patted my shoulder. Sweet relief from a terror I hadn't wanted to consciously acknowledge.

See, everything I remembered (and shied away from when I wasn't on drugs) bore a horrible resemblance to rape. That panic Gordon was talking about, that kept earning me fresh rounds of sedatives? That had been a conviction that the dragon – a Night Fury, I was sure of it – had implanted some kind of dragon fetus inside me. That I was playing host to a parasite that would kill me the minute it was strong enough to survive on its own.

Which, now that I was off all or most of the drugs, didn't make sense. Didn't dragons lay eggs?

Well, logic was panic's prey; as long as that was what I was _that_ scared of, I couldn't reason my way to any more rational conclusion.

I seemed to have a new problem, though: now that I'd started crying, I couldn't make myself stop. I probably was starting to sound rather desperate as I tried and failed to calm my breathing – and surely even the densest of observers could have seen the plea for help in my face when I lowered my hands, wrapping their arms around my chest in a weak attempt to stop the heaves from the outside.

Blessed Gordon, he figured out within a few seconds that I was in real distress. He met the nurse at the door and explained what had happened.

"…And I'm very sorry, I wasn't expecting a good thing to get so out of hand."

"It's mostly the drugs; his emotional reactions are stronger than he is right now," she said as she prepared something in a plastic cup. "He's off the worst offenders now, so he'll be completely back to normal by Monday…" she came over. I was half expecting her to hold the cup to my lips, but instead – in a bedside manner that I preferred, actually – she tugged the arm that was not tethered by an IV away from my body and firmly pressed the cup into my hand with the sharp order of, "Drink!"

I nearly spilled it getting it to my mouth, and nearly choked on it trying to drink – but once I got my tongue and throat sorted out into the rhythm of swallowing, I didn't stop until I'd finished it off. It was very sweet and heavy, either a thin syrup or a thick juice, and it felt good on a throat raw from crying…and my sobs having been interrupted, they didn't start back up again when I finally took a breath. At least, not to the same vicious degree; they were more like a collection of sighs.

"Am I going to fall asleep?" I croaked as I handed the cup back.

"You'd have a pretty easy time dozing off, but no; it's just going to make you a little fuzzy."

"Gotcha." I settled into the pillow. "When do I go home?"

"As soon as you pass the psych tests."

I nodded, not really caring.

She'd said it was mostly the drugs that made me so emotionally unstable, and that the ones that were the most responsible had already been stopped. They wouldn't give me any mental test until all the mind-altering drugs had cleared out of my system, so I'd be completely back to normal by then and would pass their tests.

Right?

* * *

I got home Sunday night, with prescriptions for a couple of drugs.

Turns out, my recent trauma burned some new circuits in my brain. I now have panic attacks: whenever I feel sufficiently threatened, everything shuts off except my most basic fight-or-flight survival instincts. Which kicks in first is, apparently, determined by the situation. Outside the Bordon house, it had been a "run for your life" situation; according to my dad, when he'd startled me in the hallway last Saturday night I had instantly started fighting off invisible attackers. Maybe I hallucinate; nobody knows for certain, because I don't remember what I saw or heard during either of my panic attacks.

In either case my coordination goes down, as does my ability to perceive pain: I could beat myself black and blue on every obstacle and never notice until my body simply can't take any more. It seems that in the hallway, I had gone convulsing against the wall and probably would have given myself a concussion if Dad hadn't grabbed me up in a bear hug, blood and all. I'd passed out altogether after that.

That scared me enough to accept the drugs. I hadn't known I had the strength to do that to myself.

The milder one came in an inhaler; its purpose was to calm me down and keep the panic attacks from happening in the first place. I didn't like it much – or slightly more to the point, I didn't like how I felt like a stoner for using it at all, and while the drug was actually in my lungs I liked how calm it made me feel. Not happy: if anything, while under its effects I seemed to be a little depressed. Maybe that was me and how I was always a little depressed, I don't know; I think I'd simultaneously enjoy it more and be bothered by it more if it made me happy.

The more potent one was a lot like a sleeping agent, and had to be injected with a gadget like an EpiPen; I always had to have it with me, and both Dad and Gordon got lessons (which I didn't watch) on how to use it. It would knock me out for several hours, giving my brain time to reroute from a panic attack and my body a chance to recover from whatever I did to myself. That's why all the truly important people in my life had to know how it worked (because it wasn't likely I'd be in any shape to tell anyone how it worked when I needed it). I asked the doctor if I could use it as a sleep aid, and he didn't say no, he just said that it would be best if I learned how to tell when I was going to have nightmares and only use it then.

I injected a dose that night. After lying in bed wide awake for a couple of hours worrying about what my classmates would say or do if they saw me puffing on an inhaler.

* * *

I stared at my reflection in the mirror. I had gotten distracted halfway through dressing by a scar – a massive, white, rough-edged slash running vertically from my breastbone almost to my navel. Nobody had mentioned any surgeries, so it must have been put there by the Night Fury. It looked impressive.

I didn't remember getting it.

Of course, thinking too hard about the Night Fury attack would send me into a panic attack, so I would likely always be fuzzy about any mysterious scars decorating my body.

"Hiccup, are you ready to go?" Dad poked his head into the bathroom, where I was standing fully dressed from the waist down.

"Just need my shirt," I answered, looking around to see where I'd put it.

"The one you're holding?"

I looked blankly at the bundle of green fabric in my hand. "Uh…yeah."

Dad smirked. "You know, if your classmates tease you about the drugs you're on, you could always show them that scar; I bet they'd be impressed."

I rolled my eyes. "I'll bet. 'Hey, check it out, I have this massive scar and I can't think too hard about how I got it or I go PTSD.' Fantastic." I pulled my shirt on.

"No need to think too hard about it. You fought a dragon for it. You – _Hiccup_ – fought a Night Fury and _didn't die._"

I went very still, staring at my reflection.

Dad had a point. That I had the scar in the first place meant a dragon saw me as worth the effort of attacking; that I was still alive was proof that I was capable of defending myself. That was really all anyone needed to know – for now, at least. And maybe one day I would be able to face my inner demons without being overwhelmed by them, and be able to share those details with someone.

I just hoped I wouldn't have to repeat the part of the tale I could tell, over and over again.

* * *

Not a problem.

Evidently, when I'd run home in a raw panic, I'd gone straight through the center of town. The mayor's son, running home all covered in blood, was the most exciting thing to happen that day – and anyone who hadn't seen it had heard about it from someone who had. Dad must have had enough consideration to hold a press conference or something and make sure the truth was crystal clear; goodness knows, I'd have enough to worry about without muddled rumors hanging over my head.

Didn't mean there weren't whispers following me around at school, though. And if those whispers were anything to go by, my classmates were expecting me to pull a Borden Belden and wander aimlessly around the school muttering to myself.

I wondered how many people were disappointed when I didn't oblige, and how many were relieved.

"Hick!"

I turned to look at Fisher, who was looking me over anxiously as he rushed up. "I guess you heard," I said with no real emotion.

"Heard? I _saw_ you running home! I saw you in the hospital a couple of times, I, I…" he grabbed my shoulders and shook his head. "I had to see that you were really okay."

My spirits lifted a bit. Here was one person who was likely relieved that I wasn't going nuts. "Yeah, I'm fine. Mostly." I gestured at the path I was taking, indicating that he should walk with me: I was Gordon's assistant, handling field hockey equipment, and I didn't want to be late.

"Yeah…" Fisher glanced around and lowered his voice. "What's this about panic attacks?"

And at least he believed it enough to take it seriously. I lowered my voice in response, even though we were now outside and there was no one around to hear us. "I'm on drugs to suppress them – and I've got an injection on me for in case one happens anyway. It's no big deal."

"Right. But, uh, if they do happen…how bad are they?"

I rubbed the back of my head slowly. "Bad enough. Did you know that I actually have enough strength to beat myself senseless?"

Fisher's eyes widened. "So it's like a seizure, then."

"If I can't run. But I should be okay as long as nobody does anything that too strongly reminds me of…of the Night Fury attack." There. I said it. I actually said _Night Fury attack_ out loud to another person – and the sky didn't fall on me.

Fisher seemed to understand that, too. "That was the hardest thing you've ever said, wasn't it?"

"I know that burying traumatic memories isn't the way to handle them, but I really can't get them in the open right now – except when I'm so tanked on drugs that my emotions can't get a grip on them, and I don't like doing that." I shrugged. "With any luck, after a few months of assimilating them quietly, I'll be able to talk to the therapists about what happened."

"Yeah, we don't want to turn you into a druggie." Fisher patted my shoulder and walked away, leaving me to find Gordon on my own.

Only girls play hockey at this school. And before you look at me like I'm a total nutcase, let me remind you that even the guys who _don't_ play sports are enough bigger than me to rough me up; I didn't want to tempt the football players by being anywhere near their turf.

Fisher played football, come to think of it. I just never thought of him as a sportsman, despite his size.

Just as I was getting to the soccer field, I caught sight of something bounding along the outskirts of the school grounds. Berk Academy was kind of on the outskirts of town, so we saw a lot of creatures walk practically right up to the fences and stare at us. This creature wasn't normal, though. It was dark-bodied, and as it stopped and looked right at me I could see its gleaming otherworldly eyes. It looked like...

The Night Fury? Was it following me?

"Hiccup! Get over here!"

I jumped, startled, and stared in Gordon's direction. My mouth worked silently for a moment, and I gestured at the Night Fury – but when I turned my head to look again, it was gone.

So I was hallucinating now. _Great_.

I decided not to say anything. At least, not unless I saw it again.


	3. Fearless

_Claws digging into my sockets._

_A tongue exploring the inside of my mouth, leaving crackles of energy in its wake._

_Blazing eyes in dark sockets, probing my very soul…_

* * *

When I woke up and saw the plastered white hospital ceiling, my first thought was, _not again._ My head was a little fuzzy – like it had been Monday morning after I'd used my sedatives as a sleeping aid. That would pass in about fifteen minutes, but that wasn't the point. I'd had a panic attack and needed to be held down; and I'd been doing so well, too, rarely even needing the inhaler for three days…

It _was_ still Thursday, right?

I was pretty sure; my body didn't seem to have the lethargy that it had when I'd spent a week in the hospital. My left shin ached so badly, though…it had been the pain that woke me up. I lifted my head to see what was wrong with my leg.

Beyond my knee was a plaster boot, held off the bed by some kind of sling on a crane.

My leg was broken.

I dropped back down onto the bed. "Great…this time I broke something." Dad was going to have a field day when he got back home and heard about this…

"Actually, you just made it worse."

Gordon. I hadn't even realized he was in the room. "What do you mean?"

"What do you remember?"

I shut my eyes and started thinking hard.

Scott had shoved me against the lockers – no, that was yesterday. The dragon was watching me…no…assuming it was there in the first place, that was Monday. I'd been dodging Speedy behind the…_that_ was Tuesday.

"My memory's all jumbled," I finally complained.

"Field hockey," Gordon supplied.

Right…that happened every day, except for yesterday when it got rained out: Spencer got the football players out practicing in the rain, but Gordon couldn't do the same thing with two prosthetics. The girls had to pass first inspection before they took the field, _especially_ when it had rained the day before, and I'd been giving out careful warnings where I dared to as I took notes on their warmups.

"Did I say something particularly insulting to one of those girls?"

"I was hoping you could tell me: I only knew something had gone horribly wrong when you started screaming. I'd think you'd be smarter than that, though – they _are_ stronger than you."

I shook my head. "All I remember saying was…warnings about the grass. You know, 'a little caution now saves a lot of pain later' kinds of things. A twisted ankle could bench one of them for several practices, and a lot of players can get so caught up in the sport that they overlook that." I paused. Something was nagging…there. I'd said something to someone, she'd snarled back, and I'd turned away muttering to myself. Then…nothing. "The last thing I remember is…I was talking to myself about something. Maybe she thought I was still talking to her and took offense."

Gordon cocked his eyebrow. "I don't suppose you remember what you said."

"I don't even remember which of those girls it was."

The other eyebrow jumped up to join the first. Apparently, he thought I would at least remember _that_.

"Just for the record, I don't really want an apology from her; not unless she means it. 'Sorry' is kind of worthless if you're only saying it because you have to." I thought about it and added, "I guess I'd like to know exactly how I set her off, though: then we can come to some agreement where I never do it again and she doesn't break any more of my bones."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"No pressing charges?"

"Only if I hit her or something during my panic attack and she presses charges first. I just…don't want to drag this out." No, I wanted this dealt with and put away as fast as humanly possible.

Gordon finally nodded, as if he actually understood. Maybe he did. "Ah, I think we can make this quick. I'll just tell her that she has to explain herself to you – properly – or else she gets thrown off the team. Nice and simple."

"Is the threat necessary?" I asked anxiously.

"Hey, what she did to you was unnecessary roughness; she's lucky I don't suspend her even with the explanation." Gordon smirked a bit. "Are you sure you don't remember which lass it was? Because you're acting a bit like you do remember."

I rolled my eyes. "No, I really don't remember…care to fill me in?"

"Astrid Hofferson."

My breath jammed.

It would have to be Astrid, wouldn't it? The golden-haired girl I'd been crushing on for nearly ten years; she was cute then, and was glorious now. The girl who carried herself like a princess and bestowed her attention on people like they were her subjects. The girl who, under any kind of pressure, was as cool as an autumn wind – and could slice through people like that wind if she so chose.

I looked hopefully at Gordon. "Do you suppose you can ask her to _write_ me that explanation?"

"Get your head out of first gear and look at long-term. Do you _want_ her to write that explanation? Do you know her – or know _of_ her – well enough to know what the results of that will be?"

I thought about it. Then I realized that I would then have a written confession of her worst moment. With that, if I so cared, I could blackmail her into anything short of breaking more bones. I'd never do that, _but she didn't know me_ – not to the extent that I knew about her. She would insist that I burn the letter after reading it…and then would she even trust that I had? I doubted it. No, she would then be constantly breathing down my neck, conveniently ignoring that there was no logical way to prove that I'd done what she asked; I didn't think she would go so far as to break and enter the Mayor's house to find the letter herself, but who knew how far she would go if sufficiently motivated? I was sure that if she ever had any reason to think I still had that letter and would use it against her, she would beat me to death with her hockey stick. And then she would charm the authorities, beautiful enough to get away with murder. And she would scare everybody else off the case with her death-glare of blue fire…

The accelerating heart-rate monitor finally got my attention, and I scrabbled for my inhaler.

Maybe four puffs later the dratted thing's beeping went back down, and I looked helplessly at Gordon. "You'll be there, right? As…as spotter, if nothing else, right?"

"I'll be there."

* * *

Friday morning I woke up with an entirely different kind of hangover: the doctors had given me opiates for the pain in my leg. Seems those pills had been designed for someone bigger and heavier than I was – I'd have to restrict myself to half of one per dose if I wanted to be even remotely functional. Also, I couldn't use the opiates and my calming agent together; preferring the idea of suppressing panic attacks over suppressing pain, I packed my inhaler and left the pills home.

Fisher signed my cast at the earliest convenience. His was the second signature I collected (Gordon's had been first). I spent the rest of the time before hockey practice wondering if my dad would get home enough before the cast came off to add _his_ signature, and if he would care enough to do so; I would need the thing for the better part of two months, so there was a good chance about the timing.

I'll never know exactly how Gordon convinced Astrid to explain herself: I wasn't there for that part. But as I limped over to the hockey field on my crutches, they were both on the bench waiting for me. Just seeing her at a distance had me pausing to take a couple of puffs with my inhaler.

_Okay, act calm…nobody panic._ I got closer and noticed something else about Astrid. She looked pissed as hell – and a little sick, as her gaze went to my leg. I wouldn't have believed that Astrid, with all her love of hitting and tackling people, actually had a problem with causing real structural damage. But, amazingly, her face was a little pale. Was it possible that she really _regretted_ what she did yesterday?

Well, sure: her position on the team was in danger over the misconduct. Anything else was about as likely as a Night Fury turning into a pet kitty.

"Hiccup." She acknowledged my presence tersely.

I decided that, if only she sounded a little happier to see me, I wouldn't mind _her_ calling me that.

"Astrid."

"Two things, just for the record." She held up a finger. "One, there was no plan when I…it was kind of an accident. I didn't actually intend to…break your leg." Another sick glance at my cast.

I almost said something. I very nearly made some sarcastic comment about how _reassuring_ it was that she'd messed up my framework, temporarily crippling me, _by accident_. Fortunately common sense and fear came together just in time, stopping my tongue before the fatal words could slip out. I nodded as tersely as she'd acknowledged me before, and said nothing.

"Second, yesterday had been a bad day for me even before you opened your mouth." She held up a hand, cutting her eyes at Gordon. "Which doesn't excuse my assault, I know, but…any other day I'd have ignored you altogether, or only snarled at you again; something significantly less than violence."

I nodded again, more understanding then terse – and finally dared to speak. "What I've been able to remember of yesterday, it wasn't a good day for me either. Heck, it hasn't been a good _week_ for me." Two weeks, actually; and if the next two weeks were as bad as the last two weeks, this would be the worst _month_ of my life. But Astrid didn't need to hear all my woes.

I didn't need an apology so bad that I would troll for it.

Astrid considered me through narrowed eyes. "So…you don't remember yesterday?"

"I remember some of it. The closer it is to…this…" I gestured at the cast, "The less clearly I remember it." I smirked wryly. "Saving grace, right? My shinbones must have made a really horrible noise when they snapped, and I don't remember it at all."

If I was reading Astrid's expression right, she was torn between throwing up on the cast and beating me senseless. "I don't, either," she muttered. Then she took a deep breath and was back to Ice Princess Mode. "Let me clear it up for you, then: thanks to whatever twisted part of your brain is determined to always have the last word, you said 'Fearless Astrid Hofferson' in that snarky little voice. Don't ever say that again, _especially_ when I'm already having a bad day." As an afterthought – or as if the word was dragged out of her with pliers – she added, "Please."

Gordon's expression changed slightly, into one of understanding. Astrid's "explanation" evidently made more sense to him than it did to me.

I shrugged. "Okay, you don't want me to call you 'fearless' again. Fair enough. Fearlessness is overrated anyway."

Astrid surged to her feet, her hands clenched into fists. "What the hell does _that_ mean?"

Gordon stood and put his prosthetic hook on her shoulder, stopping her from actually approaching me. He was pretty fast, too, though not quite fast enough to counter my reflexive response to "angry girl incoming." By the time Astrid came to a full stop in word and motion, I had jerked backwards – buckling at the waist to protect my torso – stumbled on my crutches and fell down.

_There's no winning with Astrid!_ I would take small victories where I could find them, though: she didn't actually trigger another panic attack. My breathing had accelerated and my heart was threatening to burst out of my chest, and I was gripping my crutches so hard that my knuckles were white, but the nightmares weren't coming after me. The drug was still holding.

"Ow," I said as a bit of an afterthought.

Astrid didn't apologize. I didn't expect her to: she still hadn't apologized for the more serious offense, so she wouldn't offer anything for this. But she did grimace and, with a visible effort, relaxed her attack mode.

"He's got a point there," Gordon said conversationally, still keeping his hook on Astrid, "When you're known to be fearless, people expect you to do fearless things. These are always the things that no one else wants to do – that the less fearless will watch from a safe distance. Those with the Fearless rep are doing their fearless thing all alone, which means that if anything goes wrong there's no one to back them up. Sound about right, Hiccup?"

I nodded, slowly loosening my grip on the crutches. "If _I_ were fearless, I'd have met you alone for this conversation and you probably really would have hit me for that…"

"Would not have," Astrid muttered, although with no real energy.

"…And I'd have had another panic attack and given myself a concussion." I struggled back up, taking Gordon's offered hand for support as I reorganized my crutches.

Astrid watched me silently, her eyes narrowing again. "Were you _really_ attacked by a dragon?"

So she did catch that news as it flew along the school gossip net. I'd wondered if she followed that. I thought about my answer for a moment, remembered something she said a while ago (what had that been about, again? I couldn't remember), and tugged up my shirt.

She didn't precisely gape at the long white scar, but her eyes got gratifyingly wide. "I guess you were," she said, sounding almost impressed. After staring at it for a moment she looked back at my face. "Did you kill it?" Her tone suggested that she was inclined to think _not_, but would just once give me the benefit of doubt.

I rolled my eyes and let my shirt drop. "I _survived_. That's victory enough for me."

Gordon cleared his throat. "So. Are we all good here?"

I opened my mouth and – wow, I _really_ need to think more carefully about what comes out: it wasn't until after the words hit the air that I realized I could be poking the tiger with a stick. Again.

"You're not fearless, Astrid, you're brave; there's a difference."

Astrid stared at me like I'd lost my mind. Then she slowly nodded. "Okaayyy…we're good here."

"All right." Gordon unhooked Astrid. "Go run your laps."

I watched her go join the rest of her team. "What, no shaking hands?"

"Figured that'd be pushing it."

"Yeah, you're probably right," I sighed. I limped forwards to do my job.


	4. Toothless

The front door creaked open.

Since I was home alone and hadn't invited anyone over, my few friends didn't drop by unannounced, and my dad wasn't due back for another week (if he managed to return at all), that wasn't really a good sign. It was probably a burglar. Well, I would stay on the sofa pretending to sleep – not much of a stretch at that point, seeing how my choice to be alone tonight was so that I could take a whole pill and float around in peace for a few hours – and hope that he would just quietly take what he was after and leave.

I couldn't even remember if I'd actually locked the door.

Footsteps padded down the hall and into the living room.

I kept my eyes closed and my breathing even. Sleep…sleep was good. Did I want to fall asleep while a burglar was in the house? I decided I didn't care.

The feet paused, and their owner sniffed the air.

The thought finally intruded my calm: is that _really_ a burglar? Surely a burglar wouldn't announce himself with such a loud sniffing…and that was the point where Berk's reality about burglars penetrated my haze. The only burglars in Berk came and went with the few ships that still made the journey here: it was too small a town for there to be local crooks, especially seeing how everyone was armed these days.

So…not a burglar. Scott, or one of his idiot friends, pretending to be a dragon in the hopes of scaring me? If it was, I wouldn't be giving him the satisfaction of thinking he'd succeeded. I would continue the sleeping illusion until he left.

The feet headed my way. Paused. Then something prodded my cast, which was propped up on pillows.

_Still not moving…_

It prodded again. Then, with more boldness, it took the cast and tugged – not hard enough to yank me off the sofa, but definitely like whoever it was wanted to see if the cast would come off like a boot.

Well, I wasn't falling asleep at this point, but I still wasn't going to move. I considered peeking and decided against it.

A hand pressed against my chest; another one touched my face.

Could whoever it was be wearing…gloves, or something? The hands felt chubby – not soft, exactly, but thick and firm. They were almost more like paws than hands.

A light pressure on my jaw made my mouth open. Something slipped in – buzzing against my teeth, feeling around like it was trying to coil itself inside my head –

I jarred awake, positive that I was about to have a heart attack or something. No one was bending over me; no one was in the room. It was only a dream.

"How can you stand to have so many drugs in you?"

I nearly had another heart attack – and nearly fell off the sofa whipping around in the direction of the voice. Which was, by the way, familiar…but I was sure I'd never heard it before.

A total stranger was sitting there like he owned the place. He looked older than me by a few years, long-limbed and lean; except for how very pale his face and hands were, he also looked healthy. Every scrap of clothing he had on looked like black silk; if there was an actual color in there (and I wouldn't swear that there was), it was probably purple or blue. His combed-back hair was just as black and silky, and his eyes were a strange combination of pale and intense.

In short, he looked like a hot vampire. All he was missing were the fangs.

"Who are you?" I managed to gasp.

"Toothless," he said. At least, I think that's what he said…somehow, there was a cadence to his voice that didn't make sense. "Who are you?"

"Hiccup," I answered without thinking – then wondered why I told him that nickname. While I was at it, I wondered how on earth he got this far without knowing my name.

"Hiccup…" he echoed slowly, seeming to taste the name. Maybe he had an accent or something, because that one word seemed to have a very different sound coming from his mouth. Then he nodded, his expression changing to – well, it was like learning that I was called _Hiccup_ answered a lot more questions than just the one he'd asked. "I see."

What exactly did he _see_? "Um…you did say your name was _Toothless_, right?" I asked – just for the sake of clarity. It was such an odd name, especially seeing that he did have teeth. Or were those false? "What…are…you doing here?"

The young man – Toothless? – looked at me curiously. "I wanted to understand. Now I do."

I flung my hands up and dropped back down onto the sofa. "Great. You understand. Fabulous."

"You don't know what I speak of?"

"Gee, how did you guess?"

"This…the sarcasm," Toothless sounded amused – and, oddly enough, like the words he was saying were foreign in his mouth. Perhaps English wasn't his first language. That would explain… "You are an interruption."

"What?" Of all the things I had ever been called, that wasn't one of them.

"A hiccup. A disruption in the Way Things Are. You change all you touch, for good or for bad. Perhaps it returns to its former state; perhaps it becomes something new. It's really up to time and chance."

Okay, I have heard all of that before; it just hadn't been phrased quite like that, and it _certainly_ hadn't been said like it was a _good_ thing. I sat up and looked at Toothless again. "Wow…I think you might be the first person to really like that about me."

"Why not? I was given a reconnaissance task to do – one that I did not relish completing, for it would require that I return with my findings." He shuddered lightly, a shadow crossing his face for a moment. "And I did not wish to return. Thanks to your personal intervention, I am unable to make the return journey and my life is now my own."

This conversation apparently took a sharp left when I wasn't looking. "I think I'd remember you if I'd…"

"Ah – your pardon." Toothless gestured at his elegant face. "I did not look like this when we first met; to be truthful, I don't look like this now. Your thoughts are giving me a form that allows you to accept my information without error."

"You…my…I…what…" Realizations were hitting me like arrows, way too fast and right on top of each other. My fear came back in full, and it motivated me to get up. "You – you're a dragon! You're _that_ dragon, the Night Fury!" I ran for the door – intending to go get help, tell someone that Night Furies could shapeshift and were scary-intelligent…

Except that just as I reached the door and was in the act of flinging it open, I remembered my broken leg and connected that very real detail with the curious fact that I'd just run across the living room and down the hall with no trouble whatsoever.

_This_ was the dream. The dragon had put my mind into some kind of dream-state and probably wouldn't let me out until it had had its way with my body.

I slid to the floor with a wail of distress, covering my head with both arms.

Toothless crouched down next to me and put his arms around me. "You're afraid of me." It wasn't a question: it was a statement, and he sounded almost sad saying it.

Great, now I felt bad for upsetting the hot-vampire dragon. I didn't shove him away – although I didn't feel comfortable with cuddling up to him.

"I was afraid of you."

That _did_ make me jerk away. I stared at him in amazement. "You _what?_"

Dream-logic, evidently, had come into play now that I realized I was dreaming: we weren't sitting in my doorway, but on the spot of ground beneath Borden's house.

"When you came here that day, I was desperate." His hand brushed over my head, fingers interlacing my hair. "I did not want to return to the Nest without tribute, with or without the information I was sent to find. I…lack the aggression of my fellow Nestmates. My tributes have always been small, things I could absorb without a fuss and release quickly at the Nest so I could…slip back into the Void safely. You were the first…human…that I thought to offer as tribute."

Judging by the context, I guessed "slip back into the Void" meant teleporting. That would explain a lot. "So it wasn't you that kidnapped the human who lived here…about twelve years ago."

Toothless looked at the house. "No. I only joined the World Crossers…" his nails traced patterns on my scalp, "Three years ago, when my last 'firebreath' developed to the minimum sufficient level."

I got the…slightly unnerving sense that he was sifting through my mind, looking for terms that matched what he wanted to say so that I would understand what he was communicating. Well…why not? English clearly wasn't his first language, nor was "human" his first society. It was still unsettling; I refocused on Toothless. "Okay, so you wanted me as tribute, and you attacked me. Got that. Then what? What did I do that made…_that_," I gestured at the house, where – dream logic again – the grinning-skull Night Fury that haunted my worst nightmares was standing in the shadows of the doorway staring at us, "Afraid of _this_?" I waved at myself.

Toothless looked for a long moment at the apparition. Then he shook his head, and the door closed between us and it. "I don't look like that anymore. In that moment…while I was tapping your brain, you tapped mine – and you changed the very foundation of my name. After a week of the new core, I developed a new face and form, and an altered skill-set. That is why I can no longer cross between worlds – teleport, as you call it."

For a second, that didn't make sense. Then I remembered some old books I read (which I'm _sure_ were fiction, but they were well-thought) that said a person's "true name" was the very essence of a person. One book in particular said that the true name was the epitome of everything a person had ever accomplished and was constantly added to – or built upon – over the course of a lifetime. Looked at that way, it made sense that something like that would be built on a foundation or around a core, right? Something that was completely out of the bearer's control, like their DNA. Like…if I had a true name like that, its "foundation" would be that I'm a human being and all the things that my particular genes make that mean. Possibly my family tree.

And_ I _changed _that_ for a _dragon_?

"How," I gasped, staring at Toothless again, "How did I change your roots? Wait, I have a better question – how did I do it _without knowing _that I was doing_ anything?_"

Toothless nodded solemnly. "And that is why I feared you."

He didn't know either.

"What I have become…" he said softly, musing, "I have never seen it before. It must have perished before my time; killed off when being able to Void-slip quickly…first became a necessity."

I blinked. "Why did teleportation become so important for you guys?"

Toothless _did_ shudder then, and hold me closer. The sky darkened and rumbled ominously, and the waves crashed up on the shore very close to us.

Looks like I wasn't the only one with un-confrontable demons: he didn't want to face his, either. Well, I could respect that…but I was getting extremely uncomfortable with something that looked this much like a male human, hugging me like a big teddy bear. Time to change the subject.

"Okay, nevermind. Uh, when I changed the roots of your name, did that have any effect on…everything else?" I couldn't see how it _wouldn't_: kick a new foundation under an old house and you would shake the house.

Toothless brightened a bit as he was distracted from his brooding. "Well…for a little time I was afraid my name would collapse."

_How could a _name_ collapse?_ Well, never mind – obviously it could, at least in whatever passed for dragon religion or superstition or whatever. I wondered what would happen to a person or creature if their name were to collapse. Nothing good, I'd imagine; we're talking about the summary of a creature's very being.

"It held, though," I prompted.

"Yes…even though I can no longer do _everything_ I remember doing, it does not change that I _did_ do those things. And I still want – and need – much the same things now as I did before." He thought for a moment. "All that has truly changed is what particular deeds I can and cannot add to my name."

"Are you still the same class you were before?" As soon as the question left my mouth I wanted to laugh at myself. How on earth would _he_ know? Humans designed the classification system, not dragons.

Toothless looked at me curiously – and with a bit of his own amusement. "I don't know. What class was I before?"

* * *

With the power of dream-logic we were in Berk Academy's science lab looking over the classification system that Borden Belden had designed. There were six classes, and dragons were sorted into them based on their firing range, natural armor and overall destructive power.

"I have not actually _used_ my firebreaths since you changed me," Toothless told me as he looked at the pictures of Boulderskin dragons. "But I have the same quill-to-curl ratio as these forms. I think I always did."

"Okay, so not a Sharpshooter and not a Tunnelmouth." I pushed aside the folders with those labels. "The rest are all about average in range."

Toothless pulled out two pictures and looked back and forth between them. "Before you changed me, I had _this_ many spikes," he said meditatively, waving a Gronkle picture. "Afterwards, I had _this_ many," and he gestured with a Snafflefang shot.

I cocked my head. "How tough was your hide?"

Toothless squinted at the notes, as though willing them to translate into something he recognized. Maybe he was. "Not this tough. This form," the Gronkle, "seems to have as much hard-flame as I _did_, but not enough soft-flame. Mine were equal – and I think they still are."

I actually understood what he meant by hard- and soft-flame – though they weren't terms I'd have used. "Hard-flame" was the clear-cut specialty of about half the Boulderskins, and was used in lesser amounts by almost all the other dragons; we humans called them cannonballs, because they could reduce a rock wall to very fine dust if a barrage of them lasted long enough. "Soft-flame" was called "petriflame" by humans; it enveloped a target, soaked into every available crack, crevice, and pore – and if the target was capable of moving, even if it was just to bend in a strong wind, it would freeze. How long the effect lasted, and how fast it set in or wore off, seemed to depend a lot on the dragon using it and what the target was.

I pushed aside the Fearflare folder (they were the Boulderskins' opposites) and held up the last two files, Destructor and Stingstrike. "Last ones." I was ignoring Mystery, because the only dragons to go in there were the ones we hadn't brought down at all and therefore had no real information.

Toothless stared blankly at the label on Stingstrike. Then he took the Destructor folder and looked through it – briefly. "Ah." He pushed it away. "I can tell you this for certain, I _was not_ a Destructor form. The particular firebreath that dominates these forms…_that_ flame was the last of mine to ignite."

I looked at the Stingstrike folder. "How likely do you think it is that I would, in the process of taking away your teleporting skill, completely invert your original firepower? I mean, making the breath you had in the _least_ quantity, suddenly be your _specialty_?"

Toothless stared at me for a long moment, considering. "Not very. And as frightened as I was that my name would collapse…I have seen Destructors that specialized in the Breath of Death, as frightened as that. The word you use is…" his hand lifted to brush my face, "…Berserk. If that breath became my specialty when I was so frightened, I would have made of myself a target for your kind to slay – and if that happened and I was _not_ slain before I revived, I would have looked about to see much death and destruction."

Admirable logic.

"So I was one of the…Sting-strikes, then…and I still am. Why do you call it Sting-strike?"

I thought about that. "I guess because the dragons in this class don't do much damage to us humans and our homes, overall; barely a sting. And they strike fast, getting in and out before anyone comes to fight them." I looked curiously at Toothless as something else occurred to me. "You don't have many aggressive instincts, do you? You're not a fighter, like the Destructors or even the rest of these guys," and I waved at the full-house of discarded folders. "You don't do very much damage and you don't _want_ to do very much damage."

Toothless shook his head. "I don't want to cause damage _at all_. I see that more clearly now, now that I cannot return."

"I don't _need_ to be afraid of you, then. You could live here – you'd have to hide from my dad and any other visitors, they'd probably try to kill you on sight – but most of the time I'm alone here. You'd have shelter, and I'd have a constant companion so I'm not just talking to an empty house. Even if you can't understand what I'm saying when we're not doing…_this_," I gestured to the room at large, "We could still live together in peace." Wow, this had all the hallmarks of being a let's-improve-relations-between-the-feuding-clans movement; I was proud of myself.

Yeah, no, actually I was sure something was going to go wrong and we'd get caught and be in big trouble.

Maybe I was lonelier than I thought, if I was so willing to go through with this despite my misgivings.

Toothless put his hand over my heart – reading my emotions, I guessed. "You…_do_ still fear me, though…" he said cautiously, "You fear my kind. You perhaps would not be making this offer to my true face." There seemed to be a flicker of hope in those pale eyes, despite his wariness.

I shrugged. "Your kind has been raiding my kind every full moon since I was born. Fifteen years ago. I was taught to fear you my entire life, and my first _real_ encounter with a dragon just reinforced that lesson. Fifteen years of negative association are not reversed in a day, not for humans – _especially_ not when a traumatic experience is involved. But I'm willing to try. Before you, I never encountered a dragon personally, so at least it won't be a _complete_ uphill battle. As for the trauma, you already said that your appearance has changed since your attack on me; the face that I associate with…a memory I don't want to think about, to be honest…it's long gone. So just looking at you won't cause a panic attack. As long as you avoid mimicking that attack too closely, I'll be fine sharing space with you." I didn't touch the part about not extending the invitation to him in the waking world. Mostly because he was probably right. But he looked human right now, even if he did look like a hot vampire, and I was okay (well, mostly okay) with talking to him.

Toothless looked long and carefully into my eyes. Deciding if I meant what I said, I supposed. Then he nodded – and smiled.

"So, uh, what _do_ you look like now?"

Something started…moving, inside my head. Like it wanted out. It wasn't comfortable – and it was tickling the back of my mouth, threatening to set off my gag reflex. My vision blurred and darkened, everything started spinning…I felt like I was falling…

My body convulsed with a short coughing fit, jarring my cast and making my leg ache. Then I opened my eyes and looked straight into a scaly black face.

Elements of the dragon that had attacked me were still there: the facial proportions were about the same, and of course the color matched. But Toothless's eyes bulged out slightly, where before they'd been sunken in sockets that looked a bit too big. His muzzle had gotten some flesh on it, making his face look much softer and friendlier than the garish skull it had been before. The ear flaps were new, too; gentle petals folding back around what had previously been open ear canals.

He was _sweet_ now: almost babyish for a dragon.

I giggled a bit at the cute face. Well, it was more of a wheeze; my throat was still objecting to whatever Toothless had done to hold me in the dream-state up until a moment ago. But I did smile, and I hoped he would interpret that as a friendly gesture.

Seemed that he did. With the difficulty of one who had never used muscles in a certain way, he twitched his own mouth into a smile.

"Hiccup?"

I very nearly had a heart attack at Gordon's voice. What was he doing here?

Toothless jumped very like a startled cat and stared in the direction of the voice. Fortunately the "here" was in the vicinity of the front doorstep and not in the living room – yet – so there was nothing for him to attack in a panic.

I tapped his shoulder quickly (making him spin to stare at me) and willed him to understand my gestures: I pointed at him, laid my finger across my lips, and pointed quickly at the ceiling.

People didn't look up. If Toothless could still cling to ceilings, he could avoid detection.

Toothless looked at me, looked at the doorway, and sprang for the ceiling. In a flash he was upside-down, clinging like Spider-Man and staring down at the room. I wouldn't be sure until the day I could face all of those traumatic memories without flinching, but the rest of his body seemed to not be as skeletal as it had been when I first saw it creeping on a ceiling – though the difference wasn't quite as marked as with his face.

"Hickory?" Gordon's voice was closer – calling up the stairs, I guessed.

I raised my finger to my lips again, warning Toothless to stay very quiet. To my relief and amusement, he moved one of his own pawlike hands to his mouth and shushed me back. He got it.

"In here, Gordon," I called. My voice was raspy but not suspiciously so – not like I had any idea what would rouse suspicions. "Is something the matter?"

Gordon thumped into the room. "Front door's open."

"Is it?" Should I sound innocent? No, he'd know at once I was trying to hide something. I've been told many times over the years that I'm a terrible liar. "I guess I was pretty out of it earlier." True as far as it went. I wasn't _much_ better at skirting secrets, but at least I could do that much.

"How's the leg?"

I shrugged. "No worse." Noticing that the pile of pillows supporting it was askew (and I didn't want to think too hard about _why_ while someone was there to analyze my face), I tried to adjust my cast. "So, um, what are you doing here?"

I hoped, at the least, I was managing to sound casual.

Gordon held up a waxed-paper bag. "I got you some takeout; figured you wouldn't want to prepare your own meals while you were still restricted to the crutches."

Good guess. I squirmed a bit to sit up. "Thanks. Will you, uh…be having dinner here?"

"Sorry, I have some paperwork to do." He set the bag on the coffee table and helped me get oriented.

Something occurred to me. About earlier that day. "Can I ask you something before you go?"

"Sure."

"You seemed to understand what Astrid was talking about when she told me not to…"

"Ah…" Gordon nodded sagely. "You want to know what was wrong with 'Fearless Astrid Hofferson,' with or without the snark."

I nodded.

"Mind you, it's not my place to say; Astrid will have to tell you herself. What I can tell you is, it probably would have been better for her whole family if Berk as a society discovered the existence of petriflame a couple of years before we did. Might not have changed what happened, but it would have changed a lot of people's perception of it." And then he left, closing the door firmly behind him.

Toothless dropped to the floor and stared after him. Then he stared curiously at my bag.

"You want some of this?" I got the burger out and rested it in my lap. Then I dumped half of the french fries into the bottom of the bag, set the carton with my burger and handed the bag to Toothless. "Fries first; they're better when they're hot."

Toothless sniffed at the inside of the bag curiously. Then he stuck his entire face in. I could hear him slurping and munching, and he looked so ridiculous with a fast-food bag on his head that I had to grin.

I made a note to myself to enter the words "fearless" and "Hofferson" into a local website's news engine the next time I dragged myself upstairs. Just at the moment, Gordon's very simple explanation made little sense – and no way was I going to be able to ask Astrid.

"Did you have any luck with girls back at the nest?" I asked the twitching ears.

Toothless looked at me – with the bag still on his face.

"Real attractive." I went back to my own fries. "I don't know about your kind, but the females of my species are weird. Or maybe it's just something Berk does to people. How can two creatures of the same species have the same language and still completely fail to understand each other?"

Toothless pulled the bag off his head and looked at my burger.

"You want this now?" I picked up the burger and unwrapped it halfway. Then I stared at it, uncertain how to begin. "What do you think, bud? I could limp my way to the kitchen and get a knife, cut it in half nice and tidy…I could try to tear it – no, that would make a mess…I could eat half of it now and you can finish in one go…"

While I was rambling Toothless had leaned carefully on me and studied the burger I was gesturing over. Suddenly his head jerked forward and – the only way I can describe what happened next is, his jaws popped out and rows of _razor-sharp teeth_ tore a chunk out of my burger! Then he resumed his cute face and ambled away, leaving me staring in shock at a crescent burger that seemed to be roughly half what it used to be and fingers that I could hardly believe weren't bloody or missing tips.

It had happened too fast for my brain to react with a panic attack.

Five, maybe ten minutes ago I was a bit confused why my brain translated his name as Toothless. Now I was really confused.


	5. Unexpected

_**?'s POV (AN: **__you'll know who it is by the next POV__**)**_

_Everything hurt, but my head was worst._

_All I wanted to do was lie down and sleep. Every instinct I had said that was a bad idea, though. I probably had a concussion._

_I should have kept my gear on last night. Not that it would have done any good – the amount he'd been drinking, I would have had to be wearing a full suit of titanium armor to protect myself from him. But at least I'd have had some protection on my joints and torso, and my helmet would have protected my face._

_Had I been running around town all night? It felt like I had. The early morning twilight was just beginning to light the sky._

_Nobody had looked out their window. Or if they had, nobody had invited me in for the night._

_I was both relieved and hurt by that. On the one hand, I didn't want anyone to see me like this; on the other, I might need medical attention._

_My chest made a very unsettling sound when I coughed._

_How much had he had to drink, anyway? He didn't usually hit me so hard._

_I pulled out my phone and started scrolling through my contacts list, squinting at the bright screen. It was Saturday, so I had the entire day to myself; if only someone would let me crash on their sofa for a few hours…I was _completely fine_, I just needed to sleep it off. On something softer than the hard unforgiving ground, which was looking more and more appealing the longer I walked._

_Not her, I'd have to answer way too many questions…_

_She'd take pictures and post them online…_

_She'd freak out at my bloody nose…_

He'd_ only let me sleep over, no questions asked, if I slept with him and I'm just not in the mood for sex…_

_Reality finally set in. I had spent years building a reputation for strength and aggression, telling myself and everyone around me that no one with any brains dared to cross me until I had convinced everybody. Most days, I even convinced myself. But that meant I had never shared my dirty secret with anyone. It didn't matter, I told myself; they don't need to know, I said. It was a crystal palace of popularity on an unstable foundation, with my own blood soaking into the cracks; I had turned a blind eye to the weakness, believing my own propaganda, certain that I could hold together on my own._

_This beating was the deep freeze, turning the blood in the cracks to ice and splitting the foundation wide open. I had chosen to stand alone, and now there was no one to turn to when I really…_

…_needed it…_

_The phone blurred as tears filled my eyes, overflowing to mingle with my blood._

_I'd admitted (to myself) that I needed help, and now I was crying because I was alone? I _did_ have a concussion. Or maybe it was the light: everything else around me was getting brighter as the sun began to creep over the horizon, but I was still standing in shadow._

_Because, I realized in the next instant, there was a house between me and the sun. It stood on top of a knoll, in full view of the rest of town but with no other houses near enough to really _see_ who came and went there._

_I was alone, this house was alone; I could stay here and sleep off these terrible bruises._

_Thought was mother to the deed – although she nearly had an abortion halfway to the house when I remembered who lived in it. What on earth would he think, to see me in this state?_

_Well…who cared what he thought? I was already halfway there, and I didn't have anywhere else to go. I just wasn't up to sneaking back into my own house, especially since it was Saturday._

_I'll just threaten to break his other leg if he asks for anything or takes pictures._

* * *

_**Hiccup's POV**_

It was actually kind of funny, in a hysterics-inducing kind of way: the Night Fury, the most feared dragon to raid the island, was scared of sleeping alone. His snuggling bothered me less in this form than it did in the dream-world when he looked more human – or, I guess, it bothered me for very different reasons. But he would _not_ sleep on the floor, or even go down to the sofa – he wanted to share my bed.

Seemed that he needed a few guidelines in place about sleeping arrangements; while I was at it, rules would have to be established about food and facilities. Since I wouldn't need to leave the house again until Monday, that meant I had until Sunday night to fully establish what those house-rules were and…well, psych myself up to endure another French kiss from Toothless so that I could tell them to his hot-vampire telepathic form. That was my entire game plan for the weekend when I went to bed Friday night.

The very next morning – at _dawn_ – the game plan went on hold.

When I first came to a rather groggy consciousness, I thought there was a thunderstorm. Then I realized someone was pounding on the front door.

_Oh, come on – really? It's a Saturday! A sleep-in day! _I tried to roll over (with Very Limited Success, thanks to my cast and my roommate) and pulled my pillow over my head.

Toothless grumbled ominously and clutched me closer.

I tried to doze off again, hoping that whoever it was would get the message and go away. It wasn't happening: the crashing continued. The problem with so much hard stone and hard metal in construction was that it echoed and reverberated. My unwanted visitor sounded like he was banging on an empty trash can, and there wasn't nearly enough carpeting to muffle the sound.

Eventually Toothless pulled the pillow off my face and looked at me sideways. He seemed to have reached the conclusion that there would be no more sleep this morning.

I curled up tighter in the blankets. "Answer it for me, would you?" I mumbled.

Toothless sat still for a moment, as though considering my words and possibly interpreting their meaning. Then he jumped off the bed and slinked out the door.

Suddenly I realized I'd just sent a dragon to greet a human. _That_ woke me up in a hurry. I scrambled out of bed as fast as my cast would let me and stumbled out on half-oriented crutches. "Toothless, get back here!"

He came back just in time to keep me from falling down the stairs. He picked me up, crutches and all, and waddled backwards downstairs using his tail as a brace – all the while giving me this look that I interpreted as, "Be more careful."

"Yeah, yeah, I know; just…let me open the door. You stay out of sight."

I don't know if he understood me or not, but he did put me down in front of the door and sprang up to the ceiling. He was certainly determined to stay close enough to see who was making this unholy racket at five in the morning.

I wrenched the door open, several degrees beyond frustrated with having to get up this early. "Enough with the…" then my eyes took in who was on the other side of the door and my voice died of the shock.

For the rest of my life, I wouldn't know which stunned me more: that Astrid Hofferson was standing on my doorstep, or that she looked like she lost a brawl. Her nose was bloody and _tears_ were leaving tracks through her nearly-ruined makeup, defensive wounds covered her arms, her entire stance suggested that it hurt to be up and walking…oh yeah, and I remembered that outfit – unless she owned multiples of these pieces and liked keeping them rumpled, she was still in yesterday's clothes.

I have no idea if I said anything when I saw her; all that went through my head was _WHAT THE HELL?_

"About time," she said in a rather poor imitation of Ms. Owns-The-World as she stalked past me. "I am sleeping on your couch for a few hours, and if you touch me or ask me any questions I will break your other leg." She found the couch, positioned herself on it with a delicacy that suggested a lot of injuries beneath the clothes, and was out like a light.

Toothless dropped down from the ceiling and stared at Astrid. Then he stared at me, probably echoing my earlier question.

"Don't look at me, I don't know what's going on here." It was like having my life turned upside-down. Again. I was used to Astrid being…well…a young goddess. A divine being of beauty and strength. No one could put a mark on her. Everyone at school liked her, or at least respected her.

So what the hell was she doing here – looking like this?

_Because…she didn't want this all over the gossip net, and knew she could threaten me into silence._ Made sense. She'd worked hard to establish herself as that Valkyrie, and she wouldn't want to give that up if she didn't have to.

But wouldn't it make more sense to go home looking like that? Have her parents patch her up, so that then on Monday she could stride right back into her life with _nobody_ the wiser? I certainly wouldn't realize that she'd ever taken a beating.

That she _had_ been beaten up, I was taking as a given: there weren't any cliffs near to town big enough to cause that kind of damage if they were fallen down, yet small enough that a hiker that careless would still be alive at the bottom.

Toothless was very carefully sniffing Astrid over when I'd finally closed the door and limped after them. He seemed to have figured out that she would hurt him – or me – if she caught anyone that close to her, but he wanted to investigate her injuries. One spot in particular, just below the ribcage, seemed to especially fascinate him. After a minute of carefully snuffling around the spot, he glided silently over to me and took my left hand; folded my fingers and considered the fist they made; and then he held his paws around it, indicating…what?

A bigger fist?

So Astrid was beaten up by someone bigger than she was. It would have to be someone a lot bigger; the closer they were to her size, the more they respected her.

I shuffled over to Astrid myself, doing my absolute best to be quiet. Toothless's sniffing had loosened her shirt over the spot; slowly, carefully, I drew it up – focusing on the task at hand as hard as I could so that I wouldn't send myself into a panic attack over what Astrid would do to me if she caught me peeking at…

A massive bruise that was the exact shape of knuckles. Of a human's left hand.

That was…definitely bigger than Scott's fist: his knuckles had been marked on me time after time, I knew what their sign looked like. It wasn't as big as the imprint my dad left on the kitchen wall once, though – nobody had hands as big as my dad's. It was maybe as big as Gordon's hand, but Gordon didn't have a left hand.

Actually, it didn't matter whose hand it was. It was an adult male's hand; that much was obvious. It made my blood boil to think that one of the grownups – who were supposed to be looking after us kids, darn it – was abusing Astrid. How could her dad let someone get away with this?

A possible answer to that hit me and made the fire in my veins turn to ice.

No.

It couldn't be.

Could it?

I lowered Astrid's shirt and looked at Toothless, willing him a very simple message: me, upstairs, at my desk.

He caught on. He bodily picked me up and carried me back upstairs.

It was time to launch that search.

* * *

"Fearless Finn Hofferson," I read.

Entering _fearless_ and _Hofferson_ in the same search bar had brought several dozen hits, most of them for this Finn. He had his own collection of videos covering a very long span, from his teen years to his prime, showing him doing all kinds of crazy things from insane skateboard stunts in places I've never seen to facing off against dragons alone and winning. He was also honest enough (or had enough of an overblown ego) to post videos of the stunts that didn't quite make it; in a brief skim of the "outtake" videos, it seemed that he'd broken nearly every bone in his body at least once and was regularly covered in blood and bruises when something went wrong and he crashed. Somebody commented that he was a medical marvel – all that damage, and he still risked life and limb.

"I don't know about _fearless_, but this Finn was reckless," I told Toothless, who was lazing on my bed waiting for me to be done watching videos. "I wonder what happened to him…"

The answer to that was in the last video: "Fearless Finn vs. Super-Flightmare," posted almost ten years ago. Flightmares were radiant creatures, but didn't normally glow; this one seemed to be reacting to an aurora, soaking up the light and becoming all the more dangerous. The green glow gave the entire video an eerie otherworldly effect.

I remembered that aurora. I remembered that dragon, in fact, or one like it: I'd watched the pretty things from my window. About half the known dragons had reacted to the aurora by absorbing its energy and becoming more devastating; most only gained a little, but some (like Flightmares and Skrills) gained a lot. The other half didn't show up on those nights, perhaps having a negative reaction to the light.

Dragons and storms are unpredictable.

Anyway. It was just like Gordon had said: Fearless Finn was all alone in plain sight, challenging the Flightmare to come and face him. No one was anywhere near him; the minute I saw that, I knew this couldn't possibly go well. Something was about to go horribly wrong, and nobody would ever get to him in time.

The bug-eyed dragon swooped down, shrieking like a banshee and blazing green-white light everywhere – mostly over where Finn was standing. He was all set to swing that axe, but as it came within range…he didn't move. It smacked his axe away with enough force to imbed it in a wall, snatched him off the ground, and flew away.

Now I understood Gordon's comment about petriflame, Thursday night. That was what had stopped Fearless Finn, I was sure of it (and so were some of the people who had left comments), but it hadn't been discovered or identified as to its purpose until almost a year after this video. And there was no body; no autopsy could be done to prove that he'd been paralyzed. His reputation was ruined.

But what did this have to do with…

"Uncle Finn!" a little girl's voice screamed in the video. It seemed familiar…then the cameraman panned in some on a five-year-old blonde with her own axe, wailing after the dragon and its catch like she'd lost her best friend.

_Oh, no…_

Astrid.

So that was it: Fearless Finn Hofferson was her uncle. Her father's brother, probably, since their last name was the same.

Other memories surfaced, now that I knew this: Astrid's parents divorced a couple of months after this video. Her mother died in a fishing accident that was possibly dragon-related before the custody case was finished. Astrid was living alone with her father. What had the divorce been about? This? I remembered Dad talking about it; Mrs. Hofferson didn't want to be around her husband anymore. Had she taken this loss badly, or had _he_ and she just feared for her safety?

The custody case…had that been both wanting Astrid, or had neither of them wanted her and been trying to foist her off on each other? Surely if neither of them wanted her, Mr. Hofferson would have gotten Astrid into foster care and out of his house. But she still lived in the exact same house now as when I first noticed her – which had been a little before the accident, if I remembered the date correctly.

For one reason or another (either over his brother or his wife), Mr. Hofferson had become a very depressed, anger-management-issues person. And he was taking his troubles out on Astrid.

"You know something?" I said matter-of-fact to Toothless as I closed my laptop, "I really hate that guy, and I would love to send you to scare the crap out of him."

Toothless growled and displayed his teeth – as if he understood what I said and either didn't like it or agreed with me and was perfectly willing to do such a thing.

I slumped in my chair. "Of course, he's a dyed-in-the-wool Viking and would probably kill you, since you can't teleport. I won't ask you to take a risk like that unless I'm beyond sure you can get away clean."

Toothless slumped himself, pulling his jaws back in. If his body language was anything to go by, he'd understood at least my intent and had in fact agreed with me.

I looked at Toothless curiously as I remembered something he'd said in the dream-state before. "By the way, answer me this."

Toothless looked up, all the focus of the hunter bearing down on me. I guess he needed that much focus to understand me when his tongue wasn't down my throat.

"You said 'tributes' before. Are they all for…for food?" I hoped the answer was no. What else they might do with a living captive, I wasn't sure – but if any of the humans carried away were _not_ killed, they might be rescued one day. If we could ever figure out the secrets of teleportation.

Toothless stared at me for a moment longer. Then he folded in on himself and looked even more upset.

Dragon sign language is pretty efficient.

I sighed. "Really? Always?"

He nearly curled into a ball. I got right away that all tributes were eaten all the time, and they probably didn't even bother to sort out "this one might be entertaining before we eat it" offerings.

So much for a rescue. Not like I hadn't already known I was grasping at straws.

"It's just wrong. Astrid shouldn't have to…she was five, there was nothing she could have done to save either her uncle or her mother. And I don't know about her mom, but there was no proof in _that_," a gesture at the laptop, "that she'd had any contribution to her uncle's abduction. She's as much a victim as her father in all of this, she doesn't need to suffer at his hands too."

Toothless made a noise like he agreed with me. Then he picked up one of my shirts and offered it to me.

_Huh? Oh…yeah…I'm not dressed yet._ I felt a flush of embarrassment as it dawned on me that I'd greeted Astrid at the door in my pajamas…but I consoled myself with the thought that she hadn't really seemed to notice, and anyway what did she expect for a five o' clock drop-in? It would have been weird if I _had_ been dressed.

* * *

Astrid was still asleep when we came down the stairs (at about six, which was approximately my breakfast time on a weekday) to have breakfast. Well, she'd said a few hours…but to be honest, I was pretty worried. How much damage was she carrying? Did she have a concussion, or cracked ribs from that blow? I was willing to bet money on the concussion, actually, because of the emotional instability displayed on her face: Astrid Hofferson Does Not Cry.

Or at least, speaking more realistically, she only cried in times and places where no one would see her and then made sure she was picture-perfect again before going back out in public. Seriously, her attitude was inspiring enough _before_ I figured out that she came from an abusive home; it was even more dramatic now.

Which didn't change the fact that I was worried about her injuries.

And so was Toothless – before he gave any sign of being interested in breakfast, he snuck back over to Astrid and sniffed her over carefully. If the amount of attention he gave her head was any hint, _he_ thought she had a concussion, too. He actually dared to open his mouth and fit the back of her skull inside, as though to suck on it; I don't know if he did or not, since I didn't go any closer than the doorway, but if he did she didn't react. A couple moments later he let go and went to investigate her torso, pushing her shirt _way_ up to clamp his mouth directly to her skin. Right on top of that knuckle print.

Something finally dawned on me. We humans had created seven classes of dragon; with the exception of Mystery, which had the ones we didn't understand, they were all paired off like three coins with a class on each side. Most of those pairings were obvious; Destructor and Stingstrike were a lot less so. I mean, everyone accepted that the one caused the most damage of any dragon and the other caused the least, but each of these classes had something they specialized in as well as something they couldn't do as well. Tunnelmouths were mostly short-range, but when they breathed their specialty fire at a longer range it expanded into rings: they could trap their prey that way, and with a lot less effort than another dragon with a different breath. Fearflares weren't all that good at defense, but with the ability to paralyze anything that might hit back they didn't have to worry about being counterattacked.

What was the Stingstrike specialty?

Toothless had called the Destructor's hallmark the Breath of Death. Could its counterpart be called a Breath of Life?

Did the Night Fury have healing properties?

It was a good thing I decided right then – with total certainty – that the logic backing that idea made sense, because Astrid nearly sent me into a panic attack a second later when she started screaming.


	6. Open Wounds

Just because I was sure Toothless was helping Astrid, didn't mean I had any idea what to do with the shrieking Valkyrie on my living room couch. She was thrashing in an attempt to fight him off; I couldn't tell if she was having a panic attack of her own or if she was just convinced that she was under attack. The only way to find out was to try and get her attention.

And that was an excellent idea.

"Astrid, it's okay," I called, trying to keep my voice calm even as I raised it to be heard through her screams. "He's just trying to…"

Her gaze locked on me. "HICCUP! WHAT THE _HELL_ IS A DRAGON DOING IN YOUR HOUSE?"

She was in full command of her senses. That was either good or bad.

I sighed. "He tracked me home the day after you broke my leg. He's been living here for about a day and a night, and I'm still alive. Are you getting the message here?"

Astrid stopped fighting to stare at me in shock.

Which gave Toothless time to let go of her side and stick his head under her skirt, provoking another shriek and some attempted kicks (attempted rather than accomplished because he grabbed her legs in both paws).

"DOES HE HAVE ANY SENSE OF PERSONAL SPACE?"

For some reason, that was funny. "Ah, nope; he spent last night snuggled up with me in my rather narrow bed, so I would say his concept of personal space is pretty well nonexistent. By the way, Astrid, I can hear you perfectly well…could you stop shouting?" Probably just as well that she'd shouted the last time, though, because I was distracted by where that fist-shaped bruise _used to be_.

"YOUR DRAGON IS TRYING TO BURN ME ALIVE AND EAT ME, AND YOU EXPECT ME TO BE _QUIET_ ABOUT IT?"

I rolled my eyes. "He is not trying to eat you, and the fire he's using on you is actually beneficial_ to you_; evidently he has to break your skin to do it properly. Look at where he _was_ biting."

There were teeth marks on her side, slashing up and down across the bruise. Purple-blue flames glittered beneath her skin – and, even as I watched, the slashes were closing.

A dragon's "Breath of Life" clearly was capable of regenerating flesh, but probably beaded up on whole skin and couldn't repair bruises without first lacerating them. Or maybe Toothless's version of the breath was too strong for the tiny repair work of broken blood vessels and he had to turn a bruise into a much bigger, open wound before it was a realistic project. Either way, he had to first bite through the skin to repair the damage beneath. That couldn't possibly be pleasant, especially since the breath itself was burning against tender flesh.

She looked, at least. And she stopped struggling altogether to stare in something like fascination at the dying embers and the flawless skin they were glowing through. When Toothless came back out from under her skirt she surreptitiously tugged a far edge up and looked at where another bruise probably had been (I'm not such a suicidal pervert that I would look up her skirt myself checking for bruises).

I leaned heavily on my crutches and spread my hands. "See? Toothless is helping you."

Astrid looked at me incredulously. "Toothless?" At least she'd stopped shouting. "You named it? And more to the point, you named it _Toothless_?"

"I didn't name him. Dragons have names of their own – not in English, of course; I don't think they can speak English. It's more of a…telepathic…concept that they expand upon over the course of their lives. 'Toothless' is just how my brain translated it."

Astrid considered me like I had morphed into some strange creature and she was trying to decide if I was safe to pet or not.

I seemed to be collecting all manner of _looks_ from Astrid today. It was the most attention she'd ever given me; breaking her previous record of explaining why she broke my leg. Oh sure, she would acknowledge me somehow when she was taking her gear off my hands before practice or unloading again afterwards, but it was always like I was just a moving equipment rack. At this point, I was almost human to her.

She yelped again as Toothless turned to gnaw on her left forearm. "_Gently_! Don't snap my wrist!"

"If he hurts you, he'll make it better. I promise."

Astrid narrowed her eyes at me. "Really? His magic fire can repair bones, too?"

"It's not magic," and she wouldn't care, "And, I don't see why it can't."

"So why didn't you have him do your leg?"

"Ah…excellent question. Hadn't thought about it." I considered my cast. "First of all, he'd have to break the cast off and rip my leg open to get to the fracture, and I don't know if I could handle that. Panic attacks, remember? Second, if he used that fire to set the bone faster than Nature would otherwise allow, surely people would notice me walking around with no cast. And at least Fisher would ask about it, and I'm a bad liar and not much better at keeping secrets."

"He doesn't know about your pet dragon already?"

"He's as bad at keeping secrets as I am at lying. If I told Fisher, no matter how hard he tried to keep it under wraps, it would be all over the school the minute someone put a little pressure on him."

Astrid thought about that and nodded like it made sense. I wondered briefly if she knew Fisher.

"How does your head feel, by the way?"

She blinked in surprise. "Not too bad…my face still hurts, though." She flinched as Toothless started on her other arm, and looked miserable. "I'm going to have to let him chew on my nose, aren't I?"

I shrugged. "Well, unless you actually want to explain to everybody that your dad punched your lights out." It wasn't until after the words left my mouth that I realized that was exactly the wrong thing to say. And the winner of the Foot-In-Mouth Award goes to Hickory Harrison Haddock the Third.

Astrid stared at me with such a shocked, horrified expression that I knew I'd guessed right. She rallied desperately, but was barely able to whisper, "What makes you think it was my dad?" Not her best comeback; I'd rattled her.

Not a good thing: the minute she got her feet back under her, she would punch _my_ lights out.

"That…didn't come out right," I offered weakly, pulling out my inhaler. I took a quick puff, composed myself, and tried again. "It was actually pretty obvious, once I sat down to think. You're strong for your age, Astrid, and have no problem fighting dirty; the only way you could _lose_ a fight is if you were physically outmatched, and the only people in town who outmatch you are all more than a quarter-century older than you." There was almost nobody in town between sixteen and twenty-six years our senior. "And I saw those knuckle-dents, by the way: I knew it was a man, and one who still had his left hand. I remembered my dad talking to Gordon about your parents' divorce case, and later about your mother's death, and I just…put it together."

Astrid regained her footing. "That's ridiculous!" she huffed, "Why would he turn abusive?" She wasn't instantly trying to kill me, however, probably because Toothless was still practically sitting on her. Also…it was hard to tell because of her bloody nose, but I think she was pale.

I took a deep breath. My next words were dangerous, but they needed to be said. "Just for the record, I did not know about your Uncle Finn before this morning. I'm sorry."

To my surprise and consternation – though, at that point, not really to my _shock_ – Astrid's face crumpled and she burst into tears.

Toothless stared at her and then at me, as though trying to figure out what he was supposed to do now. He couldn't start on her nose (which was apparently the last injury that needed healing) because she was covering her face with both hands.

_Sorry, pal; I don't have a clue how to deal with this._

Toothless gently pulled her off the sofa and into an awkward embrace, nosing her chin and…warbling, I guess…he sounded anxious.

For lack of anything better to do, I hobbled back into the kitchen and started working on breakfast. Yeah, yeah, I know – how much cooking can a boy on crutches do? For your information, toasting bread was well within my culinary skills, and my balance wasn't so terrible that I couldn't fry some eggs. I just wanted to do something special for Astrid.

I hoped she would stay and eat. But if she didn't, well…Toothless would eat anything I let him eat.

* * *

Astrid came into the kitchen just as I was staring up at the cupboards, wondering how I was going to stretch far enough to get a couple of glasses without falling over. "That was the worst month of my life." Then she noticed me. "Problem?"

I looked at her red-eyed face. Then I looked at the cupboard. "Amazing how a person doesn't appreciate being able to balance on tiptoes until it becomes impossible."

Astrid followed my gaze. "And you're only noticing this now? How did you drink in the past two days?"

My face heated up. Rather than try to think my way to a glass-obtaining solution while on drugs, I had taken to swigging water straight from the tap and everything else straight from the jugs they came in – but I really, _really_ didn't want to say that to Astrid. "Um…"

"On second thought, don't answer that." She reached past me and coaxed a couple of tumblers to her hands. Putting one down in front of me, she carried the other one (and one of the plates I'd already gotten down) to the counter between the stove and refrigerator.

I devoted all my attention to filling my own plate and glass, and then getting them both to the kitchen table without spilling everything. Considering the success of that endeavor an _accomplishment_ was rather depressing; I used to do that without even thinking about it. Before sitting down to eat, I dumped the last of what I cooked into a pan for Toothless.

We ate in silence. I don't know what Astrid was thinking about, but I was wondering if she was going to continue with the "worst month of her life" on her own or if I was supposed to ask.

Finally she took pity on me.

"When I was a little girl, there were three very important people in my life: Mom, Dad, and Uncle Finn. First my uncle disappeared; then my mom. Dad…the dad he was started to die when Uncle Finn was carried away. That was why my mom left…why she tried to take me with her." She looked up at me across the table. "This is all hindsight, by the way. At the time, I just…I didn't understand why they were fighting. He'd started drinking; started insisting – loudly – that my mom just wanted to divorce him to distance herself from the disgraced family name."

I turned my toast over and over in my hands. "Did he…did you hear anything that suggested he might have beaten her? Was he abusing you before your mom left?"

Astrid sighed and shook her head. "I don't know about my mom, but he didn't start beating me until after she died. As long as she lived and there was a chance she would return, I was the company to his misery; a Hofferson who had fallen hard. Afterward…" She peered into her glass. "When he looks at me, he sees the woman who left him to never come back. The older I get, and the more he sees Mom in me, the more often he hits me. When he's really, really drunk, he calls me by her name."

I jerked upright as a horrifying thought hits me. "He hasn't…" I don't quite know why I didn't finish the question. Maybe I'm afraid of the answer.

Astrid looked at me confused for a second. Then her face cleared and she shook her head, for a moment returning to the Valkyrie I recognize. "No, he hasn't raped me." Then she spoiled the effect by folding in on herself and adding, more softly, "Yet."

For a second, I studied her face. Her nose was still swollen and purple, her eyes were still red, and the rest of her face was pale and blotched with the last of her tears. Somehow she was still beautiful…but the walls she normally held between herself and the outside world had some gaping holes in them. She was deeply afraid, and I could see that.

"The older you get, the more he sees your mom and the more he abuses you physically," I said softly. "You're starting to worry that one day he'll see her enough that he'll add sexual abuse, aren't you?"

Astrid tried to pull her emotional protection back together. "I'm not worried," she tossed out, confident – and strangely enough, I believe her.

She's not worried.

She's terrified.

I chose not to call her on that one, though. "Okay." I finished my toast and dusted off my hands. "Just so you know, that door's always open. If you ever have reason to think your dad's going to beat you again, you can come here for as long as you need. And it'll be our secret: nobody ever has to know that you're coming over here."

Astrid squared her shoulders and glared at me. "What makes you think I'll ever come here again? A Hofferson never runs."

"Do you still want Toothless to fix your nose before you leave?" It's kind of a low blow, really: reminding her that she has good reason to hide her face right now, away from her worshippers at school.

Her glare switches from indignant to sullen. "Yes," she muttered.

"Seriously, though. If you're following a trail and see that up ahead is a treacherous obstacle that you're not equipped to conquer, do you keep going until you're overwhelmed? Or do you turn around, and look for another route or the necessary tools?" I shrugged. "_Scott,_ I think, would keep going – or stop altogether."

"Scott's an idiot."

Somehow, that pronouncement cheered me up. She didn't like my cousin any more than I did. "Fisher and I both look for alternatives. And you know, even though it _looks_ like your Uncle Finn always charged forwards full-throttle to conquer or be conquered, you realize he would have to set up carefully before he tried his stunts. If nothing else, he would make sure there was a camera onsite ready to film."

Astrid sighed heavily and spread her hands. "Fine, I bow to your logic. I'm not so fond of bruises that I'll stay where I know I'll get them." Then she refocused on me. "But why would I come _here_ again?"

"Why did you come _here_ today?" I countered.

"Because…"

I waited. I wanted to know if I was right.

"Because…" she stared at her hands, as though watching something vital crumble to dust in them. "…I don't have anyone in my contact list for this. My bloody face would be on the front page of the school paper by Monday, or else I would owe a favor to someone I wouldn't want to owe." She didn't lift her head, but her eyes rolled back to my face with a suspicious gleam. "Speaking of which, what's in this for you?"

"What?"

"Come on, _nothing_ is completely one-hundred-percent free. You must want something out of me. Or are you planning to hold my darkest, dirtiest secrets over my head for…"

"Astrid, the secret thing is mutual!" I waved at Toothless, who was watching our conversation like it was a tennis match. "I might know your darkest secret, but you know mine too. We hold each other hostage, like a balancing act. Okay?"

Astrid looked at Toothless, who blinked back like he was saying, _your turn_. She smirked a bit, conceding my point. "Okay, but I absolutely refuse to believe that there's _nothing_ in this big-secret, emergency room-and-board for you."

I rested my head in my hands. "Well, if you insist on putting it that way…"

"I won't carry debts. And I won't pay a price that I'll regret later."

She had favor issues. Why didn't that surprise me more? "All I want…" I sat up straight and looked her in the eye, "…Is for you to acknowledge me as another person at school. Just a wave in the hallways, the occasional verbal greeting as we pass, would be enough; I'm tired of being ignored by…everyone except the bullies."

Astrid stared at me like she hadn't heard me right. "That's it?"

"That's it."

"You're really not kidding?"

"Not kidding."

"You just want my attention."

I was done echoing. "What else could I ask for? Fisher would definitely notice if you signed my cast, _and_ he'd ask until I gave him an answer that makes sense to his highly logical brain, and remember I'm a bad liar; even if you primed me with a cover story, he'd know I was covering."

Astrid grimaced – then winced as the expression made her face hurt. "That…is an excellent point. All right, if I see you in the halls at school I won't just ignore you. I'll be civil." She pushed back from the table. "If it's all the same to you, I'll take that nose job now."

* * *

"Talk to me," Astrid ordered shortly.

Shortly, see, because she was holding as still as she could while Toothless nibbled on her nose. Her hands were gripping the sofa cushions so tightly that I was sure there would be handprints. I could understand her desire for a distraction: she was getting fire applied to her face.

"What about?"

"I don't know. Dragons are telepaths?"

I shrugged. "Well…yeah. Toothless can only hear my thoughts with either physical contact or a lot of focus on both our parts." Remembering some rather odd dreams last night when Toothless was in my bed with his muzzle tucked up under my hair, I made a leap of faith and added, "And, I guess, _I_ can only hear _his_ thoughts when he's brushing against…where my skull connects to my spine. With his tongue."

"What's it like?"

"I assume you're talking about when he's talking to me." I thought for a second. "Once I figure out that he's talking, it's like lucid dreaming. You know what that is?"

Toothless let go of Astrid and lay down at her feet.

"Yeah, I'm familiar with the concept. Wouldn't a talking dragon tip you off right away that you were dreaming?"

"He doesn't look like that in a…I just call it a 'dream-state.' Essentially when he visits my brain, he takes on a much more human form. That way, what he's saying is automatically translated into a language I understand."

Astrid rubbed her newly-healed nose and looked down at Toothless. "Huh. What's he look like as a human?"

I shrugged. "Um, like the male lead in a vampire-romance chick flick." I half-expected her next question to be along the lines of _and how do you know about chick flicks?_

Instead she cocked a sardonic eyebrow at me and asked, "Vampire, vampire-hunter, or clueless bystander?"

After a moment's thought I realized that the flicks I described _would_ follow one of those three paths, and the male lead would look different depending on which he was. "Vampire."

"I guess that explains why I felt a little woozy before. Figure he'd been sipping while he was ripping?"

_Huh? Oh._ "At least he was keeping you from bleeding all over your clothes…and it's not like there would have been a good way to put the blood back." She hadn't _seemed_ anemic when she came to breakfast…maybe the Breath of Life was able to function as a blood transfusion. Not perfect, but enough to hold her together.

"Didn't say there was. So. Why would your brain translate his name as 'Toothless,' do you think?"

"If I ever figure it out, I'll let you know."

Astrid stood up. "I need to go home and change."

I tottered up from my chair. "I'll walk you out." At her sharp look I added, "I need to lock the door after you anyway."

"Fair enough."

We got to the front door with no mishap, and Astrid paused on the doorstep to look at me like she was expecting something.

A braver Hiccup would kiss her goodbye. Brave Hiccup, apparently, didn't suffer panic attacks.

Suddenly her fist connected with my bicep, nearly sending me to the floor. I wobbled off-balance for a second and stared at her.

What did I do?

"That was for experimenting on me."

_Experimenting?_ When did I say anything about experiments? She didn't have any way of knowing that Toothless had never used that particular fire on me – and in any case, the whole heal-the-bruises thing was _Toothless's_ idea, not mine. Not like I wouldn't have asked him to heal her…or like she could hit the dragon…

If I hadn't been ready to get punched, I _really_ wasn't ready for what happened next. Astrid grabbed my collar (and yes, I flinched; I was sure there was another hit coming), pulled me close, and quickly kissed my cheek. "That's for…everything else." Then she left, leaving me standing there staring out the door like an idiot.

_Everything…else._ Being understanding, being trustworthy, and keeping a standing offer of help whenever she needed it…

It was probably supremely pathetic of me, but I suddenly knew that I would help her every day for the rest of my life if only I could be on the receiving end of another kiss – and maybe, one day, a better kiss than that one.


	7. A New Way

Monday was uneventful right up until I was hobbling towards my first period classroom and Astrid _held the door open for me._

It wasn't obvious that she'd done so; she'd simply gone through first, and paused with her hand on the door rather than instantly going to claim her "too cool for school" seat in the back. What made it special was that, just as I was getting myself across the threshold, her lips parted in a smile and a breath of sound came out in a short, soft greeting.

I'd like to say I handled it well, but I'm sorry to say I got extremely flustered and dropped my bag and nearly had a panic attack right on the spot. Fisher had to come to my rescue, and by that point Astrid had gone to her seat.

_Real cool, Hiccup; real smooth._ I took some comfort in the fact that she couldn't possibly have been expecting any other reaction: I as good as admitted to her that I didn't get positive attention all that often.

"What was that?" Fisher asked softly. "You haven't acted like that in…at least eight years."

"She looked at me," I whispered back, still scrabbling for my inhaler and trying to fit a suitable response to what had just happened. "She _smiled_ at me…_she said hi to me…_"

"These panic attacks of yours, are they triggered by _any_ high emotion or just fear?" Fisher looked worried that I might collapse screaming at his feet.

I finally managed to take a couple puffs and looked around. There was Astrid, lounging back in her chair with her hand over her mouth; she wasn't pointing, and she wasn't making any sound that was particularly audible, but her eyes were practically glowing with amusement.

"And now she's laughing at me," I finished, half-complaining. I couldn't be too mad, though; not after learning that she came from an increasingly abusive home. I could definitely believe that she didn't have a lot to laugh about in her life.

Fisher helped me to my desk and helped me get settled. "At least she's giving attention to you; attention that is somewhat better than zero on the mood scale."

I mumbled some sort of affirmative and pulled a well-polished ruler out of my pencil case.

Astrid always sat in the back of every class I have ever shared with her; my seat was always chosen (mathematically chosen, according to Fisher) based on how well I could use my equipment and environment to look at her without making it obvious that I was doing so. This meant I was usually in front of her, though not _directly_ in front of her – I'd be something like one seat over and two seats forward. I could spend almost the entire class watching her, using the windows if the outside lighting was right and my ruler if it wasn't; I'd long ago memorized the way she sat up straight and tall when she knew the answer, and slouched back with an air of disinterest when she didn't, and how she chewed fiercely on her pencils while she was thinking.

I was either a stalker, or the worst kind of pathetic.

This was probably the first time Astrid caught my eyes on her, though; or at least, the first time she acknowledged that I was watching her. She didn't – quite – smile at me, but she did cock an eyebrow and wave her finger a bit. Either saying hello or scolding me for peeping.

* * *

The entire day went like that. Every class Astrid shared with me (which was nearly all of them), she would theatrically time her entrance to be just before mine so she could hold the door for me. As I passed her, she would look directly at me for a second or two and mouth a brief "hello." Once in class, she would figure out how I was watching her and make faces at me when the teacher wasn't looking. Sometimes I would make faces back; we were practically communicating in some kind of code – the key for which, I did not have, so I have no idea what we were saying to each other.

She didn't hold the door for me when classes were over; evidently she couldn't figure out how to time her exits with mine to make them properly discreet. But that was okay, because I also shared a lot of classes with Fisher and _he_ would make sure I got out of the classrooms in one piece.

I actually found myself looking forward to field hockey.

* * *

"How are you doing, Astrid?"

Astrid carefully flexed her quads and looked at me. "Everything works, nothing hurts; it's a good day to play."

I lowered my voice as I approached with her gear. "What did your dad say when you got home?"

Astrid dropped her voice, too. "Technically I'm avoiding him. He knows I'm coming home for meals and such, but he hasn't seen me to corner me."

"So…he hasn't noticed that your bruises have healed faster than they should have."

"Nope." She very nearly snatched her padding out of my hands. Then she suddenly switched to a normal tone of voice as she started buckling things on. "Hey, here's a question: what are you going to do with…your new pet…when your dad gets home?"

That question stopped me cold.

I had _not_ thought that far.

Of course the minute my dad saw Toothless he would try to kill him. And Toothless, perceiving a threat, would try to kill my dad – especially since he couldn't teleport to a safer realm. Everybody involved would be hurt: either Toothless would be dead and my dad would be seriously injured, or Dad would be dead and Toothless would be crippled…or worst-case scenario, both would die, but no matter how the fight turned out _I_ would be heartbroken. Probably I'd go find a nice high cliff to jump off.

I was just opening my mouth to say that I didn't know when suddenly I did know. "The house. Borden's house. When my dad gets home I'll keep Toothless there. Not the most elegant of solutions, I'll admit, but…"

"You'd keep him at a haunted house?" Astrid sounded incredulous.

"And you've just proved my point."

Astrid opened her mouth…closed it again…and looked thoughtful. "Nobody would ever look there, because everybody would assume that because _they_ wouldn't go there for a million bucks nobody else would either."

"There you go." I wasn't sure that was the most elegant phrasing, but she got the idea.

"Have you actually been there, by the way?"

I took a deep breath, considered my own heart rate and decided that I could think about my previous excursions in that direction without bringing on a panic attack. "Yes. Before I landed in the hospital, my wanderings have taken me ever closer to Borden's house. _That day_, I at least made it to the doorstep."

Astrid made a face at me. Then her eyebrows shot up. "Wait, you can't think too hard about 'that day' without a panic attack, can you?"

Oh…she was wondering why I didn't know if I got farther than the doorstep. "Nope, so I don't know if I went inside or if my 'new pet' came out to say hello." Actually, I knew he probably _had_ come out: it seemed pretty unlikely that he would drag me outside after I'd changed his name, considering I'd scared him when I did that.

What I _really_ didn't remember was which of us opened the door.

Gordon would be calling the girls onto the field at any moment, but Astrid wasn't moving. She was glaring at my cast – no, that was a speculative look. She was debating something very serious, and it was cast-related.

"Astrid…" I paused. "Are you…going to sign my cast after all?" It seemed like too much to hope for…

"I'm thinking about it."

I looked over my shoulder. "You might want to think about it later. Your coach will start bellowing soon."

Astrid socked my shoulder as she jogged past me. I think that was something like a "see you later."

She's a violent person.

* * *

"Hey, Fisher, you take a lot of notes on school dynamics…"

School was out, and Fisher was walking with me to make sure I didn't wipe out on the way home. He glanced at me and made an encouraging noise, catching on to the fact that I had a question about said dynamics.

"What kind of magic talisman would Astrid's autograph be? Like, on my cast."

Fisher chuckled. "Hick, Astrid broke your leg in the first place; there's got to be only a ten or twelve percent chance that she would sign your cast following such a loss of control."

I figured the odds were better than that, since we were sort of friends now; I let it slide, though, because I didn't want to talk about that. Yet. "Just suppose."

"Let's see. I'd say about ninety-seven percent of the student body knows Astrid broke your leg, so if against the odds she actually laid claim to that damage by autographing it…that would be something like a warning. 'Don't tread on him or I'll tread on you,' kind of thing."

That was something. Maybe that was why Astrid was considering it now. "And…of that ninety-seven percent, how many of them would catch the warning and take it seriously?"

"Oh, at least three-quarters."

That was _really_ something; that would be so sweet, if she cared enough about my physical safety to put a ward on my cast.

"Why?"

"Huh? Oh…" I debated for a second and decided to share a small part of it. "At field hockey she seemed to be considering it."

Fisher stopped walking altogether for a second and stared at me. I could practically hear the synapses firing in his brain, trying to factor in this new variable in some way that made sense. "Are you sure that's what it was?" he finally asked.

"I asked her. That's what she said."

"…And she didn't hit you?"

I snorted. "Oh, she hit me; _after_ she answered, as a goodbye before she took the field."

Fisher slowly shook his head. "Wow. That's…a statistical improbability."

"How…" I hesitated. My next question was very dangerous ground. "How much do you know about Astrid's life outside of school?"

"Very little." Strangely enough, that realization seemed to cheer him up. "Huh. Maybe something happened over the weekend…an unknown variable. Probably not an injury – if it were serious enough to _be_ a variable, it would actually increase her hostility by at least eight points…"

"And she wouldn't be offering to sign my cast; she'd be snarling threats at me," I added, enjoying myself immensely. I knew exactly what that _unknown variable_ was, and it did involve an injury.

Fisher sighed dramatically. "I _do_ hate trying to factor in unknown variables: the best I can ever do is approximations based on what I observe."

I eyed him curiously. "And you're still cool with the idea that something like that is even there."

"Well, sure. Just because there was an X hidden in the equation doesn't mean I didn't execute the steps correctly." He got me through my own front door and waved goodbye. "Sorry I can't stay, but I want to get home and adjust my formula."

I waved after Fisher and closed the door. Then I looked over my shoulder at Toothless, who was sitting on the stairs and looking confused.

"He's a complicated guy."

I hobbled to the sofa and collapsed there, heaving my foot up onto a stack of pillows. My leg had been aching all day.

Toothless flew over – well, more like he glided – and landed next to me. Once there he sniffed me up and down with a level of concentration that made me think he was learning about my day from the changes in my smell.

Then he got very quiet.

"What's wrong?" Sudden stillness from a dragon made me uneasy.

Toothless looked at me. Then he waddled around the sofa and sniffed the back of my neck. Teeth scraped briefly over my skin, and his tongue probed a sensitive spot just under my hairline.

I closed my eyes quickly. Toothless wanted a dream-state conversation, and going into those was always disorienting when I was awake. _Seeing_ the world tilt around me as my body went numb…it was a bit too much to handle. "So, what mystery did you solve today?"

"How you changed my name."

I sat forward and turned to stare at hot-vampire Toothless. "Explain."

Toothless looked very, very worried – and the way he was rubbing my shoulders and studying my face, I was more than half convinced he was worried _for me_. "All along, I had wondered what power you must possess to completely transmute the basic elements of my being – to so completely transform me. Now I see that that wasn't what you did."

"I hope you're going to tell me what I did, because…you know I didn't have any idea what I was doing."

"All living things bear certain amounts of those basic elements; you gave me some of yours – joined it to my corresponding energies – and since I can only bear so much elemental force at a time, some of my power flowed to you."

My eyes widened. "Oh…I didn't destroy your power to teleport, I just absorbed it. Does that mean I can teleport now?"

"I wouldn't recommend it." Toothless looked even more anxious now. "The energy that enables us to cross the Void is, in effect, Void itself. Before you changed me, I had as much Void as a living thing could safely carry. According to the scents you bear of those you touched, humans as a species generally carry half that. _You_ used to carry that much. Now I have almost no Void left, and you bear all that I used to."

Suddenly I had a good idea where this was going, and why Toothless was so concerned. If I was doing the math right, he was saying that I now had nearly three times my original amount of "Void" – and half again what a living thing was _supposed_ to have. "I'm guessing by your attitude that this is a very bad thing. Just for me, or is it also bad for you?"

"If I were in the Realm of the Nest and still had to deliver tributes, it would be very bad. Otherwise…" he shrugged, "…I knew dragons with so little of other elements, and they live."

I shrugged, too. "I guess I should be glad that nothing bad has happened yet."

Toothless looked me right in the eyes. "Do not dismiss this, Hiccup. _It has begun_."

"What?"

"Your panic attacks. They began the day you claimed my Void, did they not? The periods of unconsciousness following a bad attack have been getting longer with each strike, have they not? And the anxiety preceding it: you have needed the Little Puffing Thing more frequently, haven't you? And are you truly going to tell me that you are adding more blankets to the bed and the sofa because winter is coming?"

I felt poleaxed. He was right – about all of it. A dislike of winter would only go so far, especially since Toothless himself was about as comfortable as a hot water bottle. "That's all because of the Void?"

Toothless nodded. "I think if this continues, you will die."

I stared at my feet. "I don't suppose you can take the Void back, can you?"

A heavy sigh answered me. "When a dragon has one element reaching maximum strength, all others are fit together with flawless precision. Your elements are locked into my patterns and have done little to soften their edges. No, Hiccup, I cannot take the Void back."

Well, it was worth a try.

Wait…

"Fitted together?" I echoed. "Because there is less of them, so they need extra precision to make the difference?" Maybe, just maybe, there was a chance.

"Yes…" Toothless had noticed the change in my mood.

"Okay, so you can't give back what I gave to you; can you reshape the non-Void elements I have left into something that can keep me alive?"

"I…" Toothless looked excited for a moment. Then he caved. "I can't. I mean, I _could_, but…you have more Void now than I did before. I can't pattern things for your entire body."

"But if you fixed my head and torso – everything with vital organs – I wouldn't have panic attacks or anything else that would ultimately impair my ability to live," I insisted, jumping up and spinning to grab Toothless's hands. "Just do as much as you can in order of how important to survival it is, and cut the losses."

"You won't enjoy it at all," Toothless warned, but he was looking hopeful.

"I'll still be alive in ten years. That's what matters."

Toothless nodded decisively. "All right. But not from here – I hate to tell you this, but the back of your head is too solid a piece for me to adequately sense what I will be doing to you."

"French kiss again?" I sighed. "Whatever. Just do it."

At least he did sound apologetic…

There was a weird sensation on the back of my neck – that felt like a Velcro clasp sounded when you opened it – and I was sitting on the sofa again, with Toothless pulling on my body like he was trying to get me comfortably positioned for what he was about to do. I squirmed a little to help and soon found myself settled with my neck bent back on the arm of the sofa.

"Okay, so I won't enjoy it," I muttered, "But please try to make it painless."

If Toothless understood, he didn't answer. He just came up next to me and positioned his mouth over mine. Like a CPR dummy. What wasn't like CPR was the way his long and snaky tongue probed around the inside of my mouth. I tried to brace myself, ready to fight down my own gag reflex if he brushed something in my throat the wrong way.

To my surprise, I found myself in another dreamscape. To my greater surprise, it wasn't one of mine at all. I was sprawled on my stomach on a beach I've never seen before, with something like the wingless body of a jet plane away off to my left. The sky was dark, with a couple of moons like eyes trying to peer through the clouds, and the water was a murky black.

I tried to move and couldn't. I tried again, harder – and a dragon paw pressed down on my back. Toothless looked me in the eye, silently informing me not to move.

He was a dragon in this dreamscape.

Then I noticed something else as I rolled my eyes around at my surroundings again: _I was a dragon, too._ My peripheral vision was way wider than it should have been, my neck wasn't kinking even though it should have been with my head bent back as far as it was, my hands were clawed and skeletal, and my arms had wing membranes growing off the backs of them.

If I said I was shocked, I'd be lying. I was a little surprised, but the more I thought about it the more sense it made. Toothless didn't know human patterns: only dragons. So, to prop me up from the inside he would have to shape me as a dragon, and to do that he took me to his dreamscape – where _I_ would take _his_ form. No wonder I couldn't move! I didn't have any experience at being out-of-body and taking on a form that someone else could understand.

Probably he was working with the assumption that when he put me back, the patterns would realign to something human. I hoped he was also building those patterns with some flexibility to them so that they _could_ realign.

Toothless put both of his paws on the back of my head…at about the vicinity of my ears, I think…and pressed down. Like a trapdoor, my jaw came up, and he looked inside.

It was strange, being aware that my mouth was so large compared to the rest of my face.

His tongue found mine and…fastened to it…that felt really weird, like he was turning _my_ tongue into an extension of _his_…and only then did he move his paws, and my top jaw fell back down to meet my lower jaw. There must have been a gap in my front teeth, or something, for me not to bite either of our tongues. Then he lifted my face up a bit with his paws under my chin, and the next thing I knew the tips of his teeth were pressed around the end of my muzzle…

And…

For just a moment, everything spun. A shudder went down my draconic body; I didn't have the coordination to fight him off, but in that moment I dearly wanted to. It was some kind of instinct, human or dragon or both, not to let anyone or anything have even the chance to cut off breathing.

_Dominance. Before he can set those patterns, he has to establish dominance._ I struggled to calm my reaction, to let him be dominant; it was the hardest thing I'd ever done. Control was always something that _I_ had, and I didn't willingly give it up to anyone. But if I didn't give it up now, I would eventually lose it anyway: I would fall into the abyss of madness and never come back.

I didn't stop shaking, but I did manage to quell the feeble struggles of my limbs.

Then…he…I…

Oh my God, that was weird…

I wasn't feeling pain…I wasn't feeling _emotion_, at least not the way I normally did…

How did I feel emotion normally?

My brain was starting to overload, to short-circuit under the weird stimulus. My dragon-skin was pulsing with sensation, and I couldn't figure out if it was pushing or pulling or banging or scratching. My guts _writhed_, like I'd swallowed a basketful of prey that wasn't dead yet, and I couldn't decide if it was legless and slithering or had way too many scratchy legs and was crawling…or if it was a mixed basket, a smorgasbord. I was shaking harder, and if Toothless hadn't been holding my muzzle shut, I probably would have been screaming. For no reason other than that this was _intense_.

Suddenly – I have no idea how much later; time doesn't mean much in dreams – there was a series of cracking noises like every joint in my body popped near-simultaneously, and the dreamscape grayed out. I felt…numb. But it was a pleasant kind of numb, considering the sensations that had been rushing through me before. For a little while I drifted there, not really thinking anything.

"Hiccup. Hiccup," a voice – Toothless's voice – called through the gray. He sounded a lot less worried; he evidently thought he'd succeeded.

I stirred cautiously and opened my eyes. I was back in my own dreamscape; it was my house, and for some reason it had been flooded and was now draining. Toothless was holding me still and keeping my head above water as I floated.

"We did it, then," I said lazily.

Toothless nodded, grinning broadly.

"No more panic attacks?"

He faltered slightly. "Well, the patterns were established in your _brain_; not your body. Your brain will eventually apply those patterns to the rest of your body, but it will take time. The panic attacks will get no worse, however, and will gradually lose their power."

"Always a catch." I could live with a slow and steady improvement, though. Besides, now that I was really thinking about it, wouldn't people get suspicious if I magically recovered from my Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in a day? "Well, I really ought to wake up now."

Toothless nodded like he'd expected that – and his dragon-tongue started unwinding from my brain.

Yeah, that was how I translated that sensation in my head. It was one of the reasons I liked him nuzzling my neck when he wanted to share dreams. The French-kiss connection was disturbingly intimate, reaching straight into the deepest and darkest recesses of my mind; the neck-nibble was more…chaste, I guess would be the word.

Also the side effects. Toothless had yet to figure out how to put his tongue in my mouth – or get it back out – _without_ setting off my gag reflex.

Still…

It could be worse. A lot worse. And because he was able to reach so deep, he was able to fix the source of the worst trauma damage. That was enough for me.


	8. Pizza Talk

"Am I interrupting something?"

Astrid's droll voice nearly gave me heart failure. I jumped so hard that I jarred my cast, sending spikes of pain up my leg, and I would have fallen on the floor if Toothless hadn't caught me. Twisting around in his paws, I saw her lounging in the doorway.

"What on – what, what…what are you doing here?" Geez, I sounded stupid; I struggled to compose myself again as Toothless put me back on the sofa.

The sardonic amusement faded from Astrid's face. "Let's just say the storm signals are up at home."

"Ah; gotcha." Now that I was looking more carefully at her, I saw that she had a bag at her feet. Presumably, it had overnight supplies in it. "Um…have you eaten?"

"Not really." The amusement was back. "Have you?"

"Uh – no." Now that she mentioned it, I was hungry. _Very_ hungry. "Do you want pizza? I'm not up to cooking, but I could call for delivery…what's so funny, by the way?"

"Mm…_funny_ is perhaps too strong a word. I just figured out that dragons can tap a nervous system from more than one direction."

I gaped helplessly at her for a moment. "How…long…were you standing there?"

Astrid checked her watch. "About ten minutes."

"And…what time is it?"

"Five-thirty-ish."

Wow. I'd gotten home at four…I was in dream-state for a _long_ time.

"For the record, pizza sounds good; thin crust, lots of chicken and veggies."

I didn't register her words for a moment. Then I remembered dinner. "Right. Pizza." I got my phone out of my pocket, found pizza-delivery, and ordered…okay, two large pizzas. One was Astrid's request and the other was a meat-lover's.

"I can't eat a whole pie," Astrid protested after I hung up. "Not of the large size. And how are you going to explain one guy ordering too pizzas?"

I bared my teeth in a savage grin. At least, I was trying for savage; don't know if I was succeeding. "What, don't I look hungry to you?"

Astrid rolled her eyes. "Ravenous."

I let my face go back to normal. "And anything the two of us don't eat, Toothless will undoubtedly oblige."

"Right…Toothless. What was he doing a few minutes ago?"

I shrugged. "Rewiring my brain."

"No, seriously."

"That's as close as I can come." I thought about how to say it. "My panic attacks were the result of some circuits getting crossed in my brain, and the subsequent degeneration _that_ caused in my body. When Toothless finally figured out what was wrong, he fixed me. No big deal."

"Really?" Astrid sounded intrigued. "So you won't need the inhaler anymore?"

"Eventually. My body needs time to recover – think detox."

"Ah."

I struggled to my feet and beckoned her closer. "In the meantime…" I pulled out my EpiPen, "I think you ought to know about this while it's still an issue." I held up the end that concealed the needle. "This thing has enough sedative to knock me out completely. If I go into a panic – and while I'm on crutches, I'm probably going to fall on the floor – hold me down, put this end right here…" I tapped my neck with it, at just about my pulse spot, "And press and hold the button on the other end for five seconds. I'll be fast asleep in a couple heartbeats."

Astrid looked at the EpiPen, a strange expression on her face. Then she looked at me. "Does anyone else know about this thing?"

"Counting grownups?"

"No."

I put the EpiPen away. "Fisher knows. I gave him the rundown about it a couple days after the incident. Other than that…" I shook my head.

"You're…"

The doorbell rang.

"And that would be the pizza. Excellent service." I waved Toothless over, focusing hard on conveying that I wanted him to carry me to the door and then get out of sight. "If you don't want Fred to see that you're visiting, I suggest you hide in my dad's room – it's just off the kitchen."

Astrid looked like there were a great many things she would like to say; ultimately, though, she decided that they could wait until the pizza guy had left. She grabbed up her bag and fled the room.

Fred was very polite and understanding; rather than press the pizzas into my encumbered arms, he carried them in himself and dropped them off on the coffee table. I made sure to tip extra, thinking of the service and the little fact that he didn't look around overmuch while in the living room. He completely missed the Night Fury saliva dripping down the back wall.

Astrid had hidden herself very effectively; it wasn't until I closed the door that I heard her voice – echoing out from under the stairs.

"You ordered pizza from a guy named Fred?"

Toothless's attention switched from the boxes to the stairs, as though demanding to know if Astrid had turned invisible for _everybody_ to have missed her under there.

"No," I answered wryly, "_We_ ordered pizza from a guy named Fred. With any luck he'll think I'm just expanding my pizza-topping horizons."

Astrid came back out, dragging her pack. "What?"

"I like veggies just fine; just not on my pizza." I opened the box on top. Meat-lover's. "Give me pepperoni, bacon, and sausage any day of the week." I sat down and started easing a slice out.

"Have you ever _had_ veggie pizza?" Astrid sat next to me on the sofa and pulled the other box out from under mine. "I can't stand pepperoni. Gives me an upset stomach."

I took a large bite of my slice so that I wouldn't have to explain why I never wanted to eat a veggie pizza. It just seemed to me like the kind of thing a macho pizza-man would make as a compromise with his salad-eating girlfriend, so that they could pretend to eat each other's foods. No way was that ideal.

Trying to explain that to Astrid, however? When she clearly _liked_ what she was eating?

Nuh-uh. Better to eat my off-the-butcher-block pie and let her have the planter box on a crust, and let things be. It was a difference of opinion, and one that we could live with as long as we kept the whole his-and-hers thing clearly defined.

Right.

* * *

"Toothless, would you kindly stop begging off my pizza? Astrid practically said that she wasn't finishing hers." I tried to turn the box away, making it clear that I thought he'd had enough meat-lover's. He'd eaten half the pizza in just under a minute, for crying out loud, and if he kept going at that pace he would finish off the pie before I'd had my fill.

Toothless firmly turned the box back and popped his jaws out to snag another slice.

It seems that dragons are carnivorous, though not to the exclusion of everything else, and when given a choice they will _always_ gravitate towards the dish with more meat. There wasn't much point to arguing with a dragon, either – they have the advantage in physical strength, firepower, and psychic compulsions. If might made right, Toothless could easily lay claim to both pizzas; it was a sign of his partial domestication that he had not done so.

Astrid delicately nibbled at a slice of her own; I suspected she was trying not to smile. I _knew_ she was trying not to look at Toothless – after he swiped that first slice, she'd made it very clear that she wouldn't be able to watch his jaws go in and out while she was trying to eat. Fair enough. I was used to it by that point, but I still remembered when it was disturbing.

I glowered suspiciously at the twitching corner of Astrid's mouth. "You're enjoying this, aren't you?" I grumbled.

"Sure. It's like a comedy, watching you two argue."

"Not much of an argument: I'm the only one talking, he's just ignoring me and stuffing his face. He's not even trying to hypnotize me or anything."

"He's not ignoring you, exactly; I mean, he responds when you _do_ something."

"Excellent point." I grabbed the lid of the box and slammed it shut almost on Toothless's nose, defying him to take any more pizza.

Toothless looked at me like I was crazy. Then he shook himself in a kind of shrug, licked the side of my neck, and walked away.

Astrid looked after Toothless. "Hm. That _was_ easy."

"Should have thought of that sooner." I looked at Astrid. "So, um…what did you mean by 'storm signals,' or shouldn't I ask?"

It was like a raincloud passed over Astrid's face. At least it wasn't a storm cloud. "Well…okay. You know how the air outside gets kind of still before a big storm and you just _know_ – like, by the smell – that the weather's about to take a turn for the worse; have you ever encountered that feeling inside a building, like the negative energy of the people there?"

"Oh yeah." Given a choice, I wouldn't go into where and how I'd experienced that atmosphere, but I definitely understood what she was describing.

"Maybe there are tangible clues that _inside_ a room is more dangerous than _outside_. Maybe you consciously pick up on them. But if it happens often enough…"

"If you've experienced the same atmosphere many times before, you get so good at catching the tangible cues that you start doing it subconsciously. Then it falls into the category of intuition."

Astrid looked at me knowingly. "Scott?"

"Well…yeah."

"Anyway, my subconscious has pretty well ingrained into itself the 'weather patterns' of my home. I can tell when _being_ home is a bad idea, within a few seconds of walking inside." She shook her head. "I just never had a safe home-away-from-home to run to when things got bad. Holing up in my room is impractical – meals are kind of a necessity, and so are all kinds of different trips to the bathroom."

Bathroom. Right. "There are only two fully operational bathrooms in this house, by the way: the master bath, and mine. There's a third, but the bathing implements are…broken. And the window's jammed open a bit – never have been able to force it closed again – so it's always freezing in there."

Astrid lowered the crust of her second slice and stared at me for a moment, her eyebrows lifting. I wondered briefly what I said.

"…Broken."

"Um…yeah…I think the pipes are corroded or something, the water's a weird color and leaves spots on everything. If the point of the bath is to get _clean_, I would really recommend one of the other two bathrooms. Oh, and the showerhead only has two settings: narrow and panoramic."

"Panoramic?"

"I don't know how that happened; you turn the thing to try and disperse the flow of water and it sprays _everywhere_. The curtains can't contain it – well, unless they're tucked into the bathtub, and then it's like getting attacked by a ghost while simultaneously drowning in a monsoon."

Astrid stared at me for a second longer. Then a weird little snort escaped, her mouth twisted – and she was rolling around on the sofa shrieking with laughter.

_It wasn't that funny._ I didn't say anything, though; really, I was feeling very proud of myself that Astrid found me so entertaining. Shaking my head, I opened my pizza box again.

"Oh." _That_ was why Toothless had surrendered so fast when I shut the box. There wasn't any pizza left to swipe: just some cheese that had stuck to the cardboard, and some toppings that had dropped off the slices. At some point when I was talking to Astrid, he'd emptied the box.

I'd only had two pieces of my twenty-slice meat-lover's pizza. I was hungry enough for a whole pie.

My face must have fallen a mile, because when Astrid came up from her laughter to try and say something intelligent, one look at my expression set her off again. In fact, she laughed so hard the second time that she fell off the sofa.

With a sigh I started picking at the scraps, debating making the effort to go and make a peanut butter sandwich. I would never get through the night on just two slices.

"Oh, for Pete's sake, Hiccup," Astrid gasped, sitting up to shove her pizza box at me, "Just eat the healthy-choice – and stop looking like, like…" she collapsed in giggles again. Evidently, whatever she thought I looked like was _so_ hilarious that she couldn't say it.

I stared for a long moment at the spectacle before me. Astrid had only had three pieces of her own twenty-slice pie; I guess for her, that was enough. Peppers, onions, olives, mushrooms, and chicken bits liberally covered the cheese and sauce. Very…very military-camouflage. A sniper would never be able to spot this thing in the woods.

My stomach growled.

Well, really, hauling myself to the kitchen for that sandwich was too much work. It was this or nothing. I eased a slice out, considered it in my hands, and took a bite – not one of my previous wolfing mouthfuls, nor an imitation of Astrid's delicate nibbles. It was a cautious bite.

It crunched. Pizza was not supposed to _crunch_, unless you were trying to eat it frozen or if it had sat around long enough to get all dry and stale. I was hungry enough to endure, though.

About two slices later I figured out the crunchy stuff was mostly the peppers, but I didn't want to pick them off in front of Astrid. I kind of liked peppers anyway. A couple slices after that I decided that, texture issues aside, the "healthy-choice" pizza wasn't as bad as I'd feared. It wasn't simply a bunch of raw veggies tossed onto a crust; some things just didn't soften completely when they were cooked, which was why the peppers were still a bit crispy.

"I am so sorry," Astrid finally announced, sounding like she'd gotten back under control. "It wasn't that funny."

"What, my face? No, I'm sure it probably _was_ that funny."

Fortunately for my ego (which had been bruised with the round of laughter that was clearly _at me_), Astrid managed to restrain herself from laughing again – but she did grin rather widely. "Well…yeah. You looked like you missed the winning lottery by one number; it was just a pizza, get a life!"

"Thank you for summing that up." I went back to eating.

"So…the out-of-service bathroom. Was it fully operational until you were old enough to pick up a wrench?"

I looked at Astrid, struggling to affect an air of offended dignity. "I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about." Punctuating my reply, I ripped my crust in half with my teeth.

Astrid lifted an eyebrow. "So tell me that the bathroom has never worked."

I chewed the stiff crust for a moment before working it away from my tongue. "Just because things started malfunctioning in there _after_ I started walking, doesn't mean it had anything to do with me."

"Sure…" Judging by the fact that her grin was still there, she wasn't buying the story of my innocence.

Actually, that one _wasn't_ mine – not entirely. A lot of it was Scott fighting with the showerhead while rinsing the most disgusting goop down the drain; I didn't get involved until later, trying to fix things and not having a lot of success. I couldn't get Dad to stop inviting the Jorgensons over for sports-TV nights, but I did take to locking Scott out of my bathroom. He could drown in the other shower with my good graces, seeing as it was originally his fault that it did that.

"Okay, no showers in the guest bathroom; how about other business?"

I didn't realize what she was talking about until I was halfway through another slice. Then I nearly choked. "Oh – ah – that. Um…there's…"

Both Astrid's eyebrows went up. "Hiccup. What's wrong with the toilet?" _Excited_ was too strong a word for the energy in her voice, but she definitely wanted to hear the rest of it.

"There isn't one. In there."

That silenced Astrid long enough for me to finish off another quarter of the pizza. "As in, there never was one, or…"

"Exploding porcelain comes to mind."

That bought me two more slices.

"There's a story there."

"Not while I'm eating, thank you."

"Fair enough." Astrid watched me dig through a couple more slices. "I _did_ leave a note for my dad before I bailed."

I went very still. My last bite of pizza seemed to have turned to clay, for all my ability to swallow it; I glanced worriedly at Astrid, trying to ask with my eyes what she'd said.

"Don't look at me like that; I didn't tell him I was coming _here_. This is a sanctuary _from him_, it wouldn't do me much good if he knew where it was. No, he thinks I'm doing homework and spending the night at a friend's – wouldn't be the first time I'd done that. I even wrote 'study sleepover' on the calendar for tonight, and with any luck he'll think it had been there for a week."

I finally managed to swallow and let out a sigh of relief. "I guess that's not lying. Well, trying to trick your dad into thinking you got permission for this, _that's_ lying, but…I mean…you are spending the night somewhere other than home, you're probably going to do homework too, and…_am_ I a friend?" I hardly dared to hope.

Astrid made a face at me. Like she was thinking. "You're not like any of the people I've been calling my friends," she replied after a moment's consideration.

"So this is…what, exactly?"

"Hmm…it's different. I can…" she looked surprised at a realization, "I can relax here – I mean _really_ relax. Not just that I don't have to worry about my dad coming in stone drunk, but I don't have to…you really don't care, do you?"

I took a larger bite of pizza than I'd originally intended, making an inquiring noise around it as I started chewing. No way was I answering that until I had a better idea _what I was answering_.

Astrid pulled out her phone and waved it at me. "Something I finally figured out…that morning I banged on your door: everyone in my address book, they expect me to look and behave a certain way. I mean, yeah, I established what that 'certain way' was myself, but now I'm stuck with it. I always – _always_ – have to keep up appearances, never _ever_ show any weakness…I had to be perfect. A throne of glass…" she seemed to fold in on herself.

I got the idea that she was looking in a mental mirror…and didn't like what she saw anymore. "You don't really think that _everyone_ you called friend," I began softly, "would turn away if they knew the 'you' that wasn't the previously-established perfect…do you?"

"I don't know." Astrid looked back at me, an expression of wonder lighting her face. "But when I'm here…I don't need my throne. Or…or my shell. I'm not Astrid the Popular, Astrid the Aggressive, Astrid the Fearless," that last with a sneer, before returning to thoughtful and wondering, "I'm just Astrid."

I smiled. "And who is this 'just Astrid'?"

Astrid was silent for so long I started to worry that I'd crossed some line that I shouldn't have. Then she laughed a little – and I've used self-deprecating humor often enough to instantly recognize it in someone else: that was it. "I don't know. Strange, isn't it? I've worn a mask for so long I don't recognize my own real face."

"Don't even know your own name…" I mused, playing with my last slice. Then I looked up and saw Astrid making a face at me. "Oh – sorry, that was…that was a dragon metaphor, actually. Toothless doesn't consider a name to be _just_ a word that people use to identify you…"

As though attracted by the word used to label him, Toothless came back and started investigating the scraps in the pizza boxes.

"It's who you are; everything you've ever experienced over the course of your life, and constantly added onto by new experiences."

Astrid stared at Toothless, with such an odd expression on her face that I wondered if she was really seeing the dragon or something else entirely.

I took a deep breath. "So what really bothers you about the real you?"

"She's…" Astrid looked at me. "I don't feel anywhere near as strong or brave – or even beautiful – as I want everyone to think I am. I…everything goes in circles, because…I want to hate my dad for what he's doing to me, but then I hate myself for wanting to hate my dad because I have to acknowledge that part of him is inside me. He might look at me and see my mother; when I look in the mirror, I see him." She looked back at Toothless. "What part of one's own identity does he consider family?"

"That's easy: foundation. Parents, grandparents, great-grandparents…everyone who has ever been directly related to you by blood forms the roots of your identity." In one breath I realized that she wouldn't consider that to be a good thing, considering the closest remaining member of her family was an alcoholic who beat her; in the next, inspiration hit. "But there's also this: people's identities never stop changing unless they stop _living_. So if the whole 'forming a child's foundation' thing is like saving a copy of all they are onto a file and transferring it to the unborn child, it's only a copy of who they were _at that exact moment_. Who they became after they conceived the baby, that's not in what the baby has."

Astrid looked at me strangely. "What are you saying?"

"That the only part of your dad that is 'inside you,' as you put it, is a spiritual file of who he was nine months before you were born. This alcoholic child-abuser, he had nothing to do with your creation."

For a long moment Astrid stared at me silently as Toothless looked back and forth between us. Then she smiled – kind of wryly. "So I can hate him without hating myself?"

"Something like that. Oh, and if you want my opinion…"

"Can I really stop you?"

"You are _stronger_ and _braver_ than everyone thinks you are. How long has your dad been beating you, exactly? And you're still convincing everyone that everything at home is absolutely fine? If you weren't strong or brave, you'd have collapsed a long time ago and nobody would have bought that lie."

Astrid's brows lowered. "By the way, if you tell anyone I said I felt that way, I'll teach you a few things about the fear of the abused."

I dropped my last slice and spread my hands wide. "See? What kind of a wuss would say that?"

Toothless made a sound like he was laughing. Then he started after the slice I dropped.

"Oh no you don't – that last piece of pizza is MINE!" Completely disregarding the fact that until that evening I barely considered healthy-choice pizza as even being food, I staved off Toothless with my crutches and retrieved the slice as Astrid laughed again.


	9. Soliloquies

_**Astrid's POV**_

Hiccup did a good job keeping his bathroom clean.

Yes, I considered it a little weird that I was showering and doing all the rest of my before-bed routine in there; however, I also conceded that he had an excellent point when he asked that I stay out of the master bath.

"_Barring accident – which, all else considered, I would really rather didn't happen – my dad will be coming home on Friday. And, since _your_ dad isn't likely to change anytime in the next three to five years, you'll still need to come over here on bad nights. Sooner or later you and my dad will be in this house at the same time, and until we figure out some way to explain it without…um, accidentally giving him the wrong impression…it would be better if you avoided him the way you dodge your dad."_

"_At least _your_ dad isn't likely to beat me if he _does_ catch me."_

"_Aaannd, he's not the most observant person in the neighborhood – at least not under his own roof – but I think eventually he'd notice the smell of someone else's bathing products in his bathroom. Better to just not go there."_

It wasn't until I was in the shower and soaping up that I realized…not what he'd meant by "wrong impression" (_that_ had been obvious from the get-go: that we were a couple and possibly sleeping together), but that I was about two steps away from being okay with that idea.

_Eep._

I turned the water from hot all the way down to cold. _Down, girl. Now. You are _not_ into Hiccup that way. It's _Hiccup_, for crying out loud. Scrawny little nerds are not your type._

Were they?

Popular opinion at school was that the popular girl would be put with the popular guy; in other words, that I would be attracted to one of the school's football stars – if not the quarterback, then the running-back or the wide receiver. One of the special talents. Maybe popular opinion would have been right, except for one thing.

The quarterback was Scott: all buff, no brains, and just about the time I might have been intrigued by his rapidly-developing guns _he_ wasn't yet into girls and was being incredibly obnoxious. I was disillusioned in days, and avoided him at all costs now. The other two fancy positions weren't much better; I knew more than I wanted to about Tully from having his twin sister on my hockey team, and Speedy…was such a diva that I more than half suspected he was closet-gay.

It was odd. I seemed to have decided months ago that I didn't have a "type," I was perfectly fine without a boyfriend at all, and rendered myself untouchable.

Oh, wait…not that odd.

In the event that I fulfilled popular-opinion expectations and had a boyfriend – _any_ boyfriend, not necessarily Scott – I would be expected to allow him to touch me. To put his arms around me, either possessively or supportively. To snuggle. And while not being against snuggling in principle, it brought the risk of my bruises being discovered. There would be questions, and eventually the boy would dump me for a lack of ability to _do_ anything. Scott would probably talk big about protecting me from my own dad, only to back down when presented with my Old Man cleaning weapons on the front porch.

God, that image was sweet.

The only reason I hadn't displayed my bruises to Scott, _challenged_ him to save me from my dad, was that my circumstances would be all over the school in hours. I wasn't a damsel in distress, thank you very much; I was a survivor.

Hiccup was right – I was stronger than people knew.

I shut off the water and climbed out, drying off carefully as I continued musing.

I'd thought I didn't have a type; I thought I was safer without one. But a type seemed to have found me, and that type was scrawny little nerds that didn't know when to shut up and…trusted vital information to girls who broke their legs in fits of misdirected rage.

_Misdirected? Well…I guess it was._ I wasn't angry at Hiccup that day; not really. I was angry at my uncle for tainting the family name (and he was long gone, unable for me to punish) and at my dad for aiming his own rage at me (and I couldn't very well hit him back). Hiccup just happened to be there, a convenient…whipping boy.

And now I was regretting it, so deeply that it hurt.

It was my fault that he could barely get around his own house. I saw him giving that martyred glower at the staircase, readying his crutches for the long trek up to the top; those stairs seemed to be…kind of big for the length of his step, and the crutches made the climb even more difficult. I wondered how he got _down_ in the mornings. Did he slide on the banister? If he fell off that thing too near the top, he'd break an arm. Or his neck. Or his skull.

It was my fault he couldn't care for himself properly. When he showed me which door had the bathroom behind it, the look he gave the shower was one of pure longing; that was when I realized he'd probably been making do with a damp washcloth and scrubbing his hair in the sink, because he couldn't get his cast wet and didn't have a good way to keep it dry in the shower. Really, the fact that he didn't reek was probably a testament to his determination _not_ to.

It was my fault that his school days were…pure hell. As if having panic attacks under pressure wasn't bad enough, he couldn't even escape the jerks who pressured him anymore. He'd spoken of eventually not needing the drugs with such delight, it was clear that he didn't like taking them; how heavily had he had to stone himself on them just to get through an average school day? And then I made it _worse_.

With angry movements I pulled my nightshirt on and stepped out, crossing to Hiccup's closed door in two long strides and knocking. I couldn't take it anymore.

"Hiccup?"

A low, grumbling growl answered me. Toothless.

I was unsettled enough to pause and really _think_, rather than just knocking again. Hiccup was probably asleep; it _was_ late. He probably didn't get very much sleep these days, what with the pain in his leg – and I could sympathize. I'd broken bones before and knew how much they ached while healing.

_No, I don't want to wake Hiccup if he's actually asleep; it can wait._ Except it couldn't. _I'd_ never be able to get to sleep, suffocating under this mountain of guilt. I had to get it out of my system.

_I could…write him a letter._ It was a strange thought, putting my heart on a piece of paper as hardcopy evidence that at one point I was this upset over something. Even stranger was the thought that I trusted him to keep my words, spoken or written, close to his chest. If I gave Hiccup that letter, nobody else would ever see it or hear about it.

I went to the guest room and dug out a notebook and pen. Yes, pen: usually I drafted things in pencil and only turned the words to ink as the final piece, but I was too tired to do constant edits and knew that what went on the paper the _first_ time would be the words Hiccup would ultimately read. Besides, there was a kind of symbolism to it – at least at that hour. He trusted me with the workings of that EpiPen thing, so I would trust him with a penned letter.

_Dear Hiccup;_

_You've never asked me for an apology, and I'm sure that's because you didn't want it recited from a script or dragged out from between clenched teeth. I can only respect you for that. But I'm sorry now, not for breaking your leg (I still don't actually remember doing that), but for unleashing upon you all the anger and even hatred that I've never dared release against the man who created it in me. It seems I learned some very bad habits from my dad: I did to you what he does to me, and for much the same reason._

_I don't want to see his face when I look in the mirror, and if that means I have to admit I did wrong, so be it. I want the girl who broke your leg, who made your life so much more difficult, to disappear into the forgotten past; I can't deny she ever existed and hope to get any sleep, so I'm going to try something much harder and admit she's here and handling problems the wrong way. Acknowledging the problem is the first step to correcting it, right? Fears are only cast off when you face them, and then you can rise out of the darkness._

_See what you do to me, Hiccup: I was never this eloquent before I started hanging out with you. Or maybe it's just that I've never tried to write a damned solili-whatever-the-word-is at eleven at night. Whoever said the midnight hour brings out the poet in us probably had a point. Okay, I'm going to bed before I continue on and make an even bigger fool of myself._

_Astrid Hofferson_

_P.S., Why did you trust me with your drug instructions so soon after I broke your leg?_

I found some tape and stuck the letter to Hiccup's door at what I hoped was his face-height. Then, feeling much better, I went straight to bed.

* * *

"Soliloquy."

I glanced at Hiccup, who was leaning against the lockers in a remarkably casual way considering his cast. Which still only had two signatures. With an effort I pulled my eyes back to his face.

"What?"

"S-O-L, I-L-O, Q-U-Y. A dramatic monologue. Soliloquy." He offered me a lopsided grin.

I smirked. "Smart-ass." I closed my locker. "So you read it."

"Uh-huh. Do you want to be pen pals, or do you just want to talk about it?"

The pen-pal idea was…cute. I wasn't sure just now what I thought of cute. "We're not talking about it _here_. At least not the whole thing."

"Right, the deep-dark-secret thing."

"How about the last question?"

"Um…" Hiccup paused, his fingers drumming on his crutches. "Because…I believe…you won't abuse the information?"

"Is that a question or an answer?" God, but there were days when getting answers out of Hiccup was like pulling teeth.

"It's…I just trust you. If I was going to regret trusting you, it would have happened last Saturday."

When I'd discovered Toothless. Right. That would have been when _I'd_ have regretted trusting _Hiccup_, when he learned about my family life. It had been three days now, and our secrets were still safe.

"It's weird, but…" I said softly, "I trust you too. And I haven't trusted anyone in a long time."

Hiccup nodded. "Just out of curiosity, have you ever invited anyone over to your house?"

I couldn't quite suppress the shudder. I wasn't hiding it from Hiccup, you understand, but we _were_ having this conversation in the hall. Who knew who would walk by? "No." I jerked my head, indicating that we should get to class.

Hiccup levered himself upright and we started walking.

"Or…not in a long time," I amended. "There were more good days when I was younger: I could invite…acquaintances…over and not worry that they'll see my dad drinking and breaking things." I didn't want to call them _friends_ anymore; not until I'd reevaluated them through the eyes of this familiar stranger known as Astrid.

"By the way, it's not _that_ bad."

Where was he now? "What's not?"

"Life." Hiccup gestured at his cast. "With this. It's really not…quite as bad as your letter implied you think. It's not _great_, but…it would be worse if I didn't have a live-in assistant."

I hadn't thought of Toothless as being an assistant. The dragon _was_ big enough to carry him all over the house…I wondered if he helped Hiccup bathe, too.

Wow, I _really_ needed to get more sleep.

"Is your dad going to help you when he gets home?"

Hiccup went completely silent.

Since that was about the point we got to class, there wasn't time to ask anything else. I spent the entire period wondering if I'd offended Hiccup or if there was something else going on in that recently-rewired computer he called a brain. It was a fair question…I thought. After all, it was pretty clear that Mr. Haddock and Toothless couldn't coexist under the same roof – and surely traces of a dragon in the house would be at least as noticeable as a girl's bathing products in the master bath.

* * *

It wasn't until a little before field hockey that Hiccup finally started talking again – although I had figured out by third period that he was seriously worried.

"The opiates must have been messing with my brain," was his opening as he hobbled along next to me.

"Drugs do that. What's the problem?"

"Dad's not going to be helping me: he has his own work to do. He'll expect me to keep going as I'd been going while he was off chasing dragons."

"But that would involve…" I hesitated a moment. Then I took his shoulder and leaned in close, dropping my voice just in case anyone happened to be trailing close. "…Toothless continuing to board at your house."

"Exactly," Hiccup replied, lowering his own voice. "It would be easier if he could still teleport – I got the sense in a couple of our shared dreams that he used to have the capability of making pocket-worlds, very through-the-looking-glass. He could live in my house without my dad ever knowing it, because they wouldn't be in the same reality."

"But he can't do that anymore?"

Hiccup shook his head. "Not since we first met. That was my fault…I'll explain that part later, it's too complicated. Short version, he's stuck all-the-way in this dimension." His brows scrunched. "He's _happy_ about it, too."

I stared, mystified. "He's lost an ability that allowed him to swoop out of nowhere and vanish without a trace…and he's happy."

"He didn't want to go home." Hiccup was quiet for a moment. "The one time Toothless talked about it, he mentioned having to bring a 'tribute' back to the nest. Tributes are usually given _to_ something: I think the dragons have some kind of telepathic boss, like a queen bee ruling a hive. When it calls…if they are capable of answering, they _must_ answer. Even the most dangerous – to us – must toe the line, and Toothless isn't aggressive; he never was."

"Must be why he's called 'Toothless'." I thought about Hiccup's idea. It made sense. Although…

"REALLY?"

I jumped, whirling to glare at Scott. "Do you mind?" I snarled, trying to cover for my obvious lack of attentiveness.

Scott ignored me and went after Hiccup, who had fallen to the ground because of his own startle. "You think you're _so_ cool just because a dragon jumped you?"

Oh, no. Oh, man…this was going to be so bad…

Hiccup couldn't get away from Scott; he couldn't get up fast enough. He was trapped – and judging by the increasingly wild and frantic look in his eyes, he knew it.

"Don't ignore me, Scott," I growled, "I'm talking to you!"

"Or is it the cast?" Still ignoring me, Scott grabbed Hiccup's collar and dragged him off the ground with one hand. "The little Hiccup's got a great big owwie and now he thinks he can kiss up to my girl!"

"SCOTT! Don't go calling me 'your girl' when we haven't even been on a date!" I was starting to get a little frantic; somehow, the fact that Hiccup's hands were still gripping his crutches was an even worse sign than the fact that he'd gone down in the first place. Maybe it was that he was no longer holding them like he was expecting to stand with them.

"I'll give you a few more scars to go with that one under your shirt – OW!" Scott dropped Hiccup and clutched his oversized nose.

"Shit," I sighed.

Hiccup had gone insane. Shrieking like some of the higher-speed dragons, he advanced on Scott with unsettling speed while flailing both crutches like clubs. The cast made his left leg a bit longer than his right, giving his walk a decidedly drunken gait, but that just made him look all the more dangerous and added a level of unpredictability to his flailing.

And with all the noise he was making, he was drawing an audience.

Scott wasn't wearing his padding or helmet; he had no protection against the onslaught. He was _giving ground_ to a boy nearly a foot shorter and at least ten pounds lighter plus cast, and he was actually looking scared. The big bully wasn't used to his victims fighting back: as the quarterback, he didn't tackle much and was in fact supposed to avoid tackles.

He'd never seen this before, I realized; I wondered if he'd been told and hadn't believed, or if nobody had thought to enlighten him about his cousin's panic attacks. I actually considered _letting_ Hiccup beat Scott into the ground. Might be good for both of them: deflating Scott's ego while giving Hiccup a much-needed confidence boost.

Then I saw Hiccup's eyes – really _saw_ them – and reconsidered.

This wasn't Hiccup: not the Hiccup I knew. He'd locked himself in some tiny mental closet and let a devil take him over – a savage creature hell-bent only on its own survival.

In this state – he was like me, the day he'd thoughtlessly said _Fearless Astrid Hofferson_ in my hearing. In this state, he could do real damage to someone without ever realizing what he was doing. If everything I'd heard about this state was true, there was a good chance he might put Scott in the hospital (although probably not kill him; he lacked the strength). The real question was, did Hiccup dislike his cousin enough to not care, when he came back out?

I had a sinking suspicion the answer was _no_.

Besides, Hiccup _trusted_ me with the knowledge of how to sedate him. He wanted me to stop him before he hurt himself _or anyone else_, even if it was Scott. I couldn't betray that trust.

"MOVE IT!" I shouted, elbowing Scott in the side and forcing him out of my way.

A sweeping kick at Hiccup's good ankle brought him to the ground again, and I threw myself on top of him. I had to grapple with his crutches for a few moments (and if I'd needed any more proof that Hiccup wasn't home, I had it now: he was attacking me like he didn't recognize me) before finally I forced his arms down by his sides and held them and the crutches down with my knees. Holding his head down with my left hand, I fumbled at his vest pockets with my right hand.

"You said you always have it on you, where is it?" I muttered. This would be very bad, if he'd forgotten to bring his EpiPen…

Finally I found it. Spinning it right-way-around in my fingers, I jabbed it at his pulse-point and got my thumb on the button. _One-Submaripper, two-Submaripper, three-Submaripper, four-Submaripper…_

Hiccup stopped screaming – so suddenly that for a terrifying second I thought he'd stopped breathing – and his body went completely limp as he stopped fighting. His head listed gently to one side as I took my hand away.

I slumped over him, feeling drained and inexplicably needing to hear his heartbeat. It sounded steady; it was slowing down, but considering how fast it had probably _been_ going due to adrenalin a slowdown had to be expected.

_Who needs hockey when you've got Hiccup-wrestling?_ That…sounded dirty and I didn't even care.

"I'm a horrible friend."

I looked up. Fisher was standing there, looking absolutely miserable and twisting his big hands together.

"Why?"

He pointed at the EpiPen dangling loosely from my fingers. "Hiccup told me how to use that, and under what circumstances, and when the moment came I just…froze. I was scared to go near him right when he most needed it."

_Frozen_.

I looked at Hiccup's very still form. Then I looked back at Fisher. "One failure does not a horrible friend make. I've seen you two, looking things up on the library computers and comparing notes. You don't mind being seen with him; that makes you a good friend."

Fisher looked a little more cheerful.

I got off Hiccup and sat next to the cast, tracing Fisher's sloppy signature. "You autographed this thing. That's positive proof: you can't deny that you cared enough to well-wish, not with the ink in plain sight. That makes you a great friend."

Fisher looked less certain about that as real proof, but he didn't look any more depressed.

"You _help_ Hiccup with his stupid science experiments." I stood up and looked Fisher in the eye. "And with the number of times those blow up, those things are trouble. Hiccup gets in trouble every time, and since you're there with him that means _you_ get in trouble, too. You don't abandon him to face the music alone; you keep helping even though it means sharing the blame. That makes you…the best friend that he has." I waved the EpiPen at him. "He's not going to hold it against you that you weren't ready to knock him down and give him his medicine."

Fisher looked much happier – and a little surprised. "Thanks, Astrid."

I heard an intake of breath that sounded like it was drawn through a stuffy nose or a big mouth. Recognizing it at once, fury blossomed in my chest and I whirled around to give Scott the full brunt of my glacial glare.

"_And you_," I snarled before he could say anything, "Don't you know better than to pick on broken-legged nerds? For that matter, don't you put any faith in real family spirit? Your dads don't treat each other in that way! Hickory Haddock is your cousin, and since neither of you has any other family of your particular generation on this beleaguered island we all call home that should make you like _brothers_! Brothers look out for each other, and help each other, and they certainly don't try to crush each other! Show some respect for who he is and what he can do, and maybe he'll repay you in kind – if he's not doing so already and you're too knuckleheaded to notice!" I stopped, chest heaving because I'd gotten practically all of that out in one breath, and noticed that everyone was staring at _me_ with varying expressions of astonishment.

Finally Scott spoke, in a much smaller voice. "Why do you care? You broke his leg." He sounded mystified rather than belligerent.

_You know what? I don't care what anyone thinks anymore._ I straightened my shoulders, swept my audience with the same cold look, and replied, "Because he's _my_ _friend_ now."

There was a collective intake of breath from the surrounding kids (not loud enough to be a theatrical full-audience gasp, but notable). Then Ruth's creepy giggle floated out from somewhere behind Coach Gordon.

"Friend? _Boy_-friend, I'd say: it would have to be love, to get involved with such a big speech!"

I considered tracking Ruth down and smashing her, but somehow the words didn't sound so bad. I guess my type really was the breakable little nerd with panic attacks and pet dragons.


	10. Strangling

**Author's Note: sorry this took so long. This chapter was WAY too hard to write for some reason, and I've also been very busy. Anyway, enough excuses – onward!**

* * *

_**Hiccup's POV**_

_Dark, cold, crowded._

_I was…not flying, exactly, but drifting rapidly through space with a lot of other dragons. There were so many, all around me, that I couldn't see anything of my surroundings; just, vaguely, where I was going. Something very heavy was secured to my chest – my tribute to the Dream Alpha. Other dragons were carrying their tributes, too, and I _knew_ that anyone with a load much smaller than half their weight was going to die._

_Mine was large; almost as big as I was. And it was moving, pulling at my bonds and making me very nervous. It wouldn't do me any good to fly the Maw empty-handed: I would go down the Alpha's throat before I could even think of slipping into the safety of the Void. It wasn't necessary to use my wings in this place, so I wrapped them around my load to keep it from struggling free._

"Don't worry, I'm not going anywhere."

…_Wait. Was that Astrid? _Astrid_ was my tribute?_

_No. No, no, no, I'm not throwing Astrid in there…_

_I couldn't breathe. My mind was on fire as I tried to fight the compulsion that held me on this course. I had to get out of there, _with my load_, before I got in range of the Dream Alpha's personal attention._

"Wake up; you're dreaming."

_There was the Dream Alpha's open jaws ahead, looking like the mouth of a cave. Dragons were throwing their tributes to be caught by that powerful inhale and trying to escape into the Void; how well they succeeded depended on whether or not the size of their tribute was enough to disrupt the pull. I was rapidly running out of time…_

"Hiccup! Snap out of it!"

_Hiccup. The disruption in the Way Things Were. That was what Toothless called me._

_I wasn't a dragon, so I shouldn't be here. That meant I was…_

_I'm waking up now. Right…NOW!_

* * *

I jarred awake so violently that, for a moment, my nightmare blended with reality. My hands tightened convulsively and I whispered hoarsely, "Not a tribute."

"What?"

It really was Astrid, peering at my face anxiously.

"_You're not a tribute_. I'll never let you be a tribute. Never." The Dream Alpha was still so real in my mind's eye that, although I had realized it _was_ just a nightmare, I was having extraordinary trouble shaking off the terror.

"Okay, not a tribute," Astrid said soothingly. "Can you let go of my arm now?"

The nightmare finally receded enough that I could take a good look around. I was on the ground next to a bench, my cast was propped up on a backpack…and Astrid was sitting by my side, her left hand tucked under my shirt and both of _my_ hands wrapped around her forearm. Tightly.

"Ah. Sorry." It took a few seconds of coaxing, but I managed to pry my fingers open. "That was…um, what happened?" I had a good guess…

"Scott went bulldog on you, and you went crazy-town on him." Astrid took her arm back and started massaging it carefully. "I had to knock you down and dose you."

Spot-on. "Told you I knew I could trust you," I teased – weakly.

Astrid smirked wryly at me. "And then I had to reassure Fisher that you wouldn't be upset just because _he_ wasn't ready to do what I did."

"Fisher was there?" Then my brain caught up with the rest of what she said, "And…" and after a moment's consideration, I nodded. "I always thought it'd be an outside chance that he'd be able to subdue and sedate me. Given how 'crazy-town' I go, it would need a level of…" I groped for words.

"Knockdown capability? Fisher's a lineman; he tackles people for a hobby."

"I was thinking more along the lines of, 'friendly hostility.' Being willing to punch an ally's lights out in certain circumstances; Fisher doesn't do that."

Astrid opened her mouth – closed it again – and made a face at me. Then she went on. "_Then_ I read Scott the riot act in front of everybody. Told him exactly what I thought of his family spirit, and…pretty much told the whole audience that you were my friend."

"You did what?" I sat bolt upright, astonished…then I swayed a bit, graying out. After being sedated, my body took a bit longer to adjust to new positions. When my vision cleared, I stared at the razor-edged blue letters that hadn't been on my leg this morning. "You signed my cast?"

"Seemed to be what friends did." Astrid's mouth twisted into an expression like she was trying not to laugh. "Fisher apparently considers my autograph to be a warding sign."

He _did_ say something like that at one point, I recalled. "How…big a crowd…was that audience?"

"Let's see. Most of both sporting teams…I'd say twenty kids, easy; maybe twenty-five." Her eyes took on a curious light and she stared intently at my face, as if searching for my reaction. "Ruth's been spreading rumors all over the field."

"What sort of…rumors?" Something about her expression was making me uneasy.

"That we're girlfriend and boyfriend; that we spend nights at each others' houses…"

Okay, I officially had no idea what to say. Was Astrid mad at me? Or at herself? Was…

"If she digs any deeper into the innuendoes or presents proof that I sleep over, _then_ I'll kill her. Otherwise…" Astrid shrugged. "It's protection for both of us."

I stared. "What do you mean…for both of us?"

"Well. If you're my boyfriend, I can fend off idiots by saying I'm already attached – and for the record, way too many of the eligible guys on this island give me the creeps where intimacy is concerned. As for you…" she grabbed the front of my shirt and hauled me to my feet by it, "do I have to explain?" She grabbed my crutches off the bench and pushed them into my hands.

No, she didn't: I understood perfectly what I got out of this. Astrid's a very scary girl, who _could_ and _would_ throttle anyone who tried to steal or break her toys. I wasn't capable of subduing her, so I was like a toy to her – I'd only be her equal partner if she let me.

Equal. Partners. Taking turns in the lead, establishing mutual agreements about where our respective skills were most effective. Having _that_…with Astrid.

That concept was so beautiful that I knew I needed more drug-free, quality sleep.

"I'm not telling my dad about this, of course."

I blinked at the sudden topic shift. "You're not?"

"I don't _know_ that he'll keep me home and triple the abuse if he learns there's actually a man in my life, but I don't know that he won't. I don't _know_ that he'll hunt you down and kill you, Chief-be-damned, but I don't know that he won't. Safer to keep things the way they are – for now."

"Ah. Put that way, it makes a lot of sense."

"Are…" Astrid hesitated. "Are you telling your dad?"

"Well, not if…not if you don't want me to…" Even as I said the words, however, a script played itself out in my head.

"_Guess what, Dad: I have a girlfriend now! We have study sessions together all the time, she helps me get around the school on these crutches…she called me a _man_ once…what? Oh, who is she? Astrid Hofferson. You know, captain of the hockey team…yes, the girl who broke my leg. Yes, I'm serious."_

"Why are you smiling?"

"Uh…" I _was_ smiling. Like an idiot. "Just…imagining me telling my dad that the most popular girl at my school decided _I_ was her boyfriend." And called me a _man_; I still enjoyed that part.

Astrid thought that one over, eyebrow cocked. "What's your imaginary dad saying?"

"He doesn't believe it." I shrugged. "I gotta be honest, though; I'd rather talk about _that_ than try to explain…my new pet."

Astrid's lips pursed. "I can see that." She leaned in. "What _are_ you going to do with Toothless? It's just not going to be practical to have him live at the Belden house, and you can't keep him at your place…"

I paused. "Actually…I think I can help him with the teleportation thing."

"You said that he couldn't…"

"_Toothless_ can't do that by himself anymore because _I_ absorbed the energies that made it possible for him to do that. That's why he had to rewire my brain, because humans can't just _handle_ that power. But he and I – we're connected, I'm sure of it, so there's a very good chance we can do it together." Especially since – because of that nightmare – I was pretty sure I knew how the teleportation worked.

Astrid stared at me like I'd gone crazy, but all she said was, "so when are you going to try it?"

"I don't know. Tonight? Tomorrow night – or morning? I don't like doing experiments on short notice, but time's running out: Dad will be home soon."

"Let's do it tomorrow morning, after you've gotten some real rest."

_What?_ "Astrid…"

"You don't actually think you're going to play with portals to other dimensions without some kind of spotter, do you?" Astrid ran right over my half-formed objections. "You can barely move on your own! You need someone strong enough to pull you out of trouble if things get out of hand; you won't trust any of the grownups or football players – and I understand why – so you're going to need me."

"I…you…well…" She had a point. I could probably get myself out of range if things went wrong in a minor way – but nothing ever went wrong on that kind of scale for me. If an invention or concoction failed, it _royally_ failed. And I couldn't dodge a _royal_ failure without two working legs. "…Okay."

* * *

Astrid woke me up early Wednesday morning. With a phone call.

"Hiccup?"

"…'Strid?" I squinted blearily at my alarm clock. "Do you ever sleep?"

"Where are you?"

"In _bed_. Where _sane_ people are at four-thirty in the morning. Why?"

"I'm at the old Belden house."

_That_ woke me up. "What? Why are you there?"

I could almost hear her shrug. "Because it was the first place I could think of where Toothless would know and there wouldn't be anyone else around to see him come in."

Possibly catching the sound of his name, Toothless sat up and sniffed my cell phone.

"Oh…right. The teleporting practice. All right, just let me…" I yawned, nearly splitting my face, "…let me get dressed, all right?"

Toothless warbled at the phone.

"Good morning, Toothless!" Astrid called, sliding into something almost-but-not-quite babyish. "Don't let Hiccup take too long, okay? I have breakfast for the two of you!"

Some days I wonder if Toothless can actually understand English; the way he started bouncing around and nudging me out of bed, he sure seemed to know what _breakfast_ was.

"All right, all right, I'm up…"

"You'd better be here in ten minutes or less, all right?"

"Fine…" I hung up the phone and organized my crutches. "Wonder what she'd do if I was late?"

I will have you know, it's very hard to get dressed when there's a cast on your leg and a dragon jumping around the room "helping" by throwing clothes at you. By the time I had clean clothes the right way on and right-side-out, we were getting very close to Astrid's ten-minute mark.

"All right, let's go."

Toothless jumped onto my back. No, not like he wanted me to carry him; his feet were still on the floor. But his wings were wrapped around my whole body, crutches and all, and his nose was in my hair. I could feel the prickles of his thoughts linking to mine.

"The old Belden house!"

A bolt of lightning went down my spine, and something made an alarmingly loud _crack_ under my skull. My whole body seemed to short out at once; sparks flared in my eyes before everything went dark.

I gasped, but there was nothing to gasp. My lungs were on fire, my brain felt like it was exploding…for a terrible, heart-stopping instant, I was sure I was dying.

I.

Couldn't.

Breathe.

* * *

"Hiccup! HICCUP!"

_Astrid?_

I hadn't realized that I'd lost sensation in my body until it started coming back. My skin returned to life with pins and needles, and my thrashing limbs stilled as I regained control over them. I was on the ground on my face…I could taste sand. I was on the beach.

Beach. Astrid. That stupid clanging door.

I'd made it.

Toothless shoved his head under my shoulder and gave me a push, rolling me onto my side. Then he warbled in my face, sounding apologetic and rather worried.

I pulled in one breath, then another. My back still hurt, but at least now I could breathe. I blinked sand from my eyes and pulled air into my lungs; I tried to say that I was alright, but somewhere between my chest and my mouth the words weren't coming. Giving up on speech – for the moment – I lifted a shaking hand to pat Toothless.

Astrid grabbed my shoulder. "Hiccup, say something!"

I tried again to speak. This time something actually came out: a groan from the depths of a mausoleum. _Fantastic, that'll go a _long_ way towards reassuring her._

"If that was a joke, it wasn't funny." That was Astrid, all right, countering her fright with fury. Any minute now she would be hitting me for scaring her.

Something was clearly wrong with my ability to speak; I started writing in the sand. I kept it simple: IM FINE.

"You're not convincing me that you're _fine_ until you can sit up."

Why _wasn't_ I sitting up, anyway? Everything seemed to be in working order…except that my left arm was going to sleep from my lying on it. And yet, somehow, I couldn't seem to move.

Toothless's tongue probed at my mouth; after a moment's resistance, I let him in. He was probably very worried about me, too, and had the advantage of having a way to determine if my brain was still functioning normally.

"Hiccup, I am so sorry. I was in such a hurry to come for breakfast that I didn't stop to think. I've never had to take anything through the Void that _had_ to still be alive on the other end."

I blinked at the worried vampire-boy. "So basically, you've never learned how to teleport smoothly. That's fine; this is a learning process for both of us. And I survived the trip, so you did something right."

Toothless looked a little more cheerful.

"Hey, I've got a question. Can you teleport somewhere you've never been if _I've_ been there? We're sharing thoughts to do this…"

"Certainly; when I could cross the Void on my own, I could go anywhere that I could sense a mind that I knew. It is how we travel to new places once we've grown too large to be carried by another." Then he felt around my neck and stroked my back (making me feel a little weird), and looked a lot more cheerful. "You can breathe now: I didn't damage your spine. I don't know if it was _supposed_ to make that noise, but it wasn't a bad sign that it did."

Everything spun and I spasmed, coughing as he pulled back.

"What did he say?" Astrid asked from behind my head.

I drew in a deep, real breath, and tried to speak for the third time. At last, I got words out. "That my spine is still whole." I still sounded down-in-a-grave, but at least my voice was working.

"Oh…you were worried about that?" Astrid rubbed my shoulder blade.

"Something made a really loud noise back there when we teleported…it sounded – _felt_ – like my neck broke. I think a little anxiety would be warranted under the circumstances."

"So Toothless gave you some reassurance and you can get up now."

"Actually…" I writhed stiffly, trying to get my pinned arm to function, "…I can't: my arm's asleep."

There was silence for a moment. Then Astrid's hand curled under my neck – "On three," – and before I could get set she hauled me up to a sitting position.

"_Hey!_" I yelped, half in panic, as I tried to jerk away from her. My senses were reeling, though, and I don't know that I succeeded. "That wasn't nice," I finally grumbled when I thought I was steady again.

Astrid ignored me and rubbed sensation back into my arm and hand. Vigorously. It felt like she was getting a little revenge for the bruises I might have left on her wrist yesterday. And the whole time, she was chatting like it was just another day. "You know, Toothless is being a remarkably good boy; I'd have thought he would be straight into the food."

I glanced at Toothless, who was watching me intently. "I guess he's still worried. About me. He also said that this was the first time he'd teleported somewhere with a load that was supposed to survive the trip completely intact."

Astrid paused and drummed her fingers on my shoulder. "I think I do believe that. Are you _sure_ you're okay?"

No, I wasn't: my skull pounded, my spine felt like it was wrapped in barbed wire, my stomach was in knots, my leg ached with a bone-deep cold inside my cast, and my toes itched like there were bugs trapped in the cast with them. I'd had absolutely no idea teleporting could be so rough on a body.

I nodded anyway. There wasn't a thing Astrid could do about any of that, and very little Toothless could do.

"Good." Astrid put a bag in my lap and shoved another one at Toothless. I don't know what was in his (and he shoved his face in there immediately upon registering the presence of food), but mine smelled of takeout sausage-and-eggs.

I mentioned my gut was knotted up, right?

Toothless hadn't forgotten me completely: when he thought I'd been sitting still too long he pulled his head out of the bag and nudged my arm, wordlessly insisting that I make an effort to get something down my throat. Eventually, to stop the nagging, I took a few bites of the breakfast sandwich, chewed and swallowed; each mouthful seemed to loosen the knots in my stomach a little bit, and by the time I'd forced the third down I realized I actually was rather hungry.

After finishing the sandwich and hash browns I looked at Astrid. "Was that it or is there anything else?"

Astrid looked up – and I caught a brief glimpse of relief before she favored me an amused glance. "When I finish mine, we can all have some fruit."

She hadn't been fooled by my nod.

"Astrid, really," I spread my arms, "The worst of it was in my head; I've worked past it, and I'm feeling much better. There was never any need to worry."

"You might want to check your shirt," Astrid replied with an enigmatic look. "There's a lot of blood on the back, like you'd backed into a painted tree or were sweating it from your spine."

I stared at her for a moment. Then I whipped my shirt over my head and dropped it across my cast – and stared blankly at the blotchy red marks on the green. I literally couldn't comprehend what I was seeing; I couldn't process it.

Astrid cocked her head and looked at my back. "Okay, it doesn't look as bad as I thought it would. Rubbed raw, not beaten bloody – and it's not bleeding anymore, so…"

Finally I thought to look at Toothless. "What…" I began – then I paused, not sure what I was about to ask. _What did you do_ seemed too accusatory, while _what was that_ seemed too stupid.

Toothless opened his ribcage.

I kid you not: he sat up, tucked his arms back, and his chest and belly opened up like some fleshy version of a very elaborate cabinet. I could make out his heart, lungs, and guts pulsing their rhythms, and a couple of other lung-shaped organs that were faintly glowing. There was also something moving in there that didn't look like typical animal insides – it could maybe have been a second vertebral column, but it was very spiky and jiggling like it was made of rubber instead of bone.

Astrid turned quickly away with a hand clamped over her lips, making a noise like she'd just thrown up a bit in her mouth.

I couldn't blame her. That was very disturbing, and way too much information. "Okay, I…I get the picture."

"What picture did you get,_ exactly_?" Astrid demanded. "I'm going to see that _picture_ in my nightmares for weeks!"

"There's, um…" I gestured helplessly at Toothless as he closed back up, "…A time or two he's mentioned to me how he can _absorb_ things he captures as tribute. That's how."

Astrid snuck a careful look back at Toothless. "He…swallows them with that…big…sideways mouth?"

"Ye…nuh…erm…I'll…get back to you on that later." I glanced at her face, which wasn't a normal color. "When I've had a chance to get a lucid-dream explanation, and you've had a chance to digest."

"I'm _absolutely fine_," Astrid muttered through her teeth. Her defiance was half-hearted, though, like she didn't even care if I believed or not.

* * *

I got my lucid dream right away, and Toothless was hanging out at the Belden house – probably exploring – while Astrid and I went to school.

Several hours later Astrid chose to sit out of hockey practice on account of an injury (she hadn't been clear for Gordon or me what the injury was, but the way she'd been walking and sitting all day suggested it was a bruised hip), and I was keeping her company on the bench. That was when we finally got back to the topic of Toothless's disturbing ability.

"Swallowing them isn't a bad guess," I admitted. "What he does is, he melds his musculoskeletal system with that of his tribute; the closer to on the spine he is, the more likely it is that he paralyzes the tribute so that it can't fight back and possibly get dropped. He _can_ absorb things fully, if they're small enough, but he didn't generally bother with tributes because he had to drop them quickly when he got back to the nest."

"Did he paralyze you?" Astrid wanted to know, morbidly curious – in spite of herself, I was sure.

"And I should know the answer to that because…"

"Uh, because you were _there_?"

I shook my head. "I really understand now why they call it the Void. There's no light, no warmth, no air…it's so completely empty of everything that it deadens your ability to feel. I don't know if I was even trying to move or not; it was like my body was gone – and anyway what was of greatest concern at that moment was that I couldn't breathe."

For a long moment we were both silent, thinking about the Void. Then I shrugged.

"Toothless apologized again; taking a deep breath was such a basic, fundamental part of his early teleporting lessons that he forgot to pass it on."

"You know what you forgot to say, when Toothless…opened up like that?"

"What?" I could think of a couple things that I could have said when that happened.

Astrid mimicked my voice. Sort of. "_I didn't know you could do that._"

I laughed a little. "First of all, I don't sound like that. Second, I wasn't all that surprised." I tapped my chest, drawing my finger down the scar. "He was French-kissing me, his hands and feet were hanging onto my shoulders and hips, and a tail-whiplash would be much smoother-edged and probably at more of an angle. How then could he have marked me if he didn't have some kind of weapon mounted on his chest?"

Astrid stared at me like I'd morphed into something.

"What? It makes sense, doesn't it? You've seen both my scar and my raw back; didn't they look similar?"

"No – I mean, you're right, but it's not that. I think that's the most you've ever said about when Toothless attacked you. And you're not freaking out."

_Then_ my heart lurched, but it didn't escalate into a full-blown panic; I was able to retrieve my inhaler at a reasonable pace, instead of my usual scramble for the thing.

Astrid looked sideways at me, vaguely contrite, as I steadied back out. "Is this the part where I'm supposed to say, 'sorry I mentioned it'?"

I put my inhaler away and thought about it. "Well, if you really want to, but I won't insist on it. I'm making progress – I can kind of dance around what happened that day, and…well, like you saw just now, if I start somewhere else I can actually say quite a bit on the subject without even noticing that I have. But I haven't finished healing yet."

Astrid thought for a moment and evidently decided she wasn't going to actually apologize.

"Speaking of healing…um…should I ask what happened to your hip?"

"_Not_ my dad. Directly."

"Huh?"

"Last night I heard him trampling up the stairs and jumped out the window. Landed in the mangled old pine; wrenched my leg some. A night _in_ the tree didn't help much either – I couldn't see well enough to get down – although it wasn't any worse than trying to sleep on a bunch of nasty bruises. Falling out of the tree this morning was the crowning indignity. Not my best landing…though not my worst, either." Astrid glanced at me wryly. "And if it were really serious, I would have asked Toothless to fix it. I'm not stupid, and I'm not a masik…" she paused and glared at my cast.

"Masochist?" I offered with a smile. "Now why would anybody think you got off on physical abuse?"

Her fist connected with my shoulder. "Smart-ass." But she was smiling back.

Maybe _I_ was the masochist. I couldn't seem to resist baiting her.

We watched the girls on the field for a while. Their form was good, but they were missing their leader. Several times one player or another glanced our way, as if in search of praise or to see if Astrid was still there. With me.

"Gonna be rumors about us everywhere," I commented.

Astrid snorted. "There already _were_ rumors about us everywhere. If I hadn't already decided I didn't care anymore what anyone else thought, I'd never be able to show my face in public again."

I glanced sideways at her. "So…if you're feeling afraid, you'll go ahead and show it?"

Definitely a masochist – but this time, Astrid just laughed.

"Hell no. Hofferson rule number one, never show fear. When they know you're scared of them, they won't let up."

I nodded. "I've heard a variation on that: _once you start running, they'll never let you stop._"

"Exactly." Then Astrid made a face. "It was a strategic withdrawal," she muttered to herself.

_What? Oh – her jump out the window._ That was so Astrid, to look back on her narrow escape from another session of physical abuse and feel the need to justify it. I would have just been thanking my lucky stars for the ability to make a clean getaway.

"Of course it was," I assured her. "What would have happened if he had caught you? I think you'd have way more than a wrenched hip." Something occurred to me. "Have you ever tried to fight back?"

Astrid looked at me like I was out of my mind.

"I know, I know, he's bigger than you. But that's never stopped you from hitting guys before; and he's forfeited any respect you might owe him by abusing you."

Slowly, her head shook from side to side. Then she jerked. "Wait, I did fight back once. How could I have forgotten? I must have really had a concussion."

"Hm?"

"That was the night before I wound up on your doorstep."

Now I knew where she was going. "I guess he didn't take your defiance well."

"Mm-mmm. In his defense, I think he was also more drunk than usual." Astrid sighed. "I hate myself for defending him; you're right, I don't owe him anything, and yet…"

"Was he a good father before?"

Astrid was quiet for a long while. "I don't remember those days very well anymore…I think so."

"That's why. The part of you that's defending him is the…" I paused for a moment, uncertain how to continue without pissing her off.

"The inner child who still remembers the man he once was and wishes he would go back to that?" Astrid finished for me, the side of her mouth twisting.

Since those were the exact words I'd been trying to avoid, all I could do was shrug.


	11. Night Flight

Toothless wanted to see where I spent most days. Specifically, he wanted to look inside the buildings.

He was communicating that to me without physically linking to my mind, French-kiss or otherwise. The teleporting must have altered some of the circuits in my brain so that I could hear his thoughtwaves "wirelessly" and I could broadcast my thoughts to him more easily. It was unsettling, disorienting, and I couldn't comprehend what he was saying in any way that could be easily translated, but it did save time: without the necessity of the trance, we could react faster.

Maybe I would get used to it.

Eventually.

I finally agreed to "escort" him around, on the condition that it be after all the classes were closed for the night. All the teachers had weapons; there was no sense whatsoever in putting either of us at risk. Also, he had to leave no mark on anything – no evidence that he'd ever been there.

Toothless agreed with that; he didn't want a fight either, and although he was convinced that no one would ever find him, he respected my desire to leave no mysteries behind. And he used to be much more at home in the dark anyway.

I had fun – a lot of fun – watching Toothless amble up and down the halls, sniffing the chairs, and putting his head in the desks. He quickly identified my most common desks, Astrid's most common desks (and he sensed the thought process that connected them, and found it funny), and even found Scott's and Fisher's desks.

Out on the hockey field, rolling around in the grass, Toothless was distracted briefly by the moon as it peered through the clouds. It wasn't the phase that signaled an attack, but it was close. He was sad, and…wondered how many of his former nest-mates had been eaten by the Dream Alpha last raid.

"My dad has been searching far and wide for your nest; he thinks if he destroys it, you guys will go away and leave us alone," I said softly. "It's probably in another dimension, though, isn't it?"

It was…though it did have an anchor in this dimension. Actually, destroying the nest wasn't such a bad idea; the little dragons probably wouldn't leave, since they could find shelter in almost any nook and cranny, but the Dream Alpha was too big for that and would _have_ to find another home. Without the Dream Alpha demanding tribute, the little dragons would no longer have to raid the humans' farms and the two species could live in…relative peace, at least.

"Killing the Dream Alpha might even be a better idea, right? Making _sure_ that it never calls its nest again, and that no other creature ever has to fear it?"

If the roiling sensation in my gut was any clue, that suggestion was blasphemous or sacrilegious or something very close to those lines _and_ would be an extremely dangerous endeavor if anyone were to even dare such an atrocity…but in a quiet, heart-of-hearts whisper, Toothless agreed with me.

"What is a Dream Alpha, anyway?" It had occurred to me that what little conception I had of the creature might be inaccurate. If it was, all in all, as bad a thing as I thought, would the dragons really resist getting rid of it?

Toothless's concept was like a huge weight coming down on my shoulders. A Dream Alpha was always _the_ most powerful dragon of a nest – either by mind powers alone, or a combination of mind powers and physical size. The mind powers were always important because a talent exclusive to Dream Alphas was to gather other dragons and combine their dreamscapes within its own; this allowed them to control all the other dragons with merely a thought – many hundreds simultaneously, if need be – should a carefully-organized maneuver be necessary for any reason. Its role was…_supposed to be_…to make sure the nest was warm and safe for the other dragons, to make sure they were all well-fed and healthy, and to lay the first block on the foundation of each new dragon's Name. The Dream Alpha was an important and sacred part of the nest's community; which was why the dragons of this nest were reluctant to take their dreamscapes back and either fight or flee, despite the fact that they were being sorely abused by their own protector.

"Oh, Toothless." I didn't know what else to say; I couldn't imagine a life like that.

Wait. Yes I could. Astrid was living just such a life with her own father, showing him respect for being her superior and hating herself for it because of how badly he treated her.

Astrid. _Astrid?_

Toothless suddenly jarred to his feet, his thoughts chattering something about Astrid.

"Whoa, wait, what?" I tried to wave him back down. "Slow down a minute, bud – what about Astrid?"

Sound poured through my head: athletic shoes fighting to maintain traction on smooth stone, the pounding of something large trying to ram through a synthetic-wood door, and a man's voice bellowing words that were slurred into incoherency. Threaded through all of that was a thought…not one of mine, not one of Toothless's…it was Astrid. It was grim determination and out-of-breath desperation, a bitter blend that ran both hot and cold – all her focus was on holding her bedroom door closed and praying it wouldn't give out before her father passed out.

Astrid _couldn't_ fight back this time: he was way too drunk to perceive pain, if the way he was battering her door was any indication, and she would only make him angrier and he might kill her. She couldn't run: he was already at her door, and if she stepped away to jump out the window again he would be through before she could even cross the room. My only question was why she hadn't bailed before he got too close, but it didn't matter right now – she was trapped, and I could tell that that door was _not_ going to hold.

He was going to get through, and he was going to rape her.

_Not acceptable._

"Toothless, rescue mission!" I knew Astrid was no damsel in distress; that didn't mean she didn't occasionally need saving. And she'd saved me from my cousin and many other beatings by signing my cast; this could return that favor.

Toothless braced on all fours and aimed his nose at the ground, exposing the back of his neck – and a couple of peculiar hollow spots on the sides of his skull, right next to his spine.

I stared blankly for a moment. Then realization hit. "I can get into your head from in back, too?" That would be much easier on me if I could ride on top while we teleported; I was used to the idea of sitting on top, like bicycling. "Wait, I don't have to use my tongue, do I? Mine's not equipped to do what yours does."

Toothless gave me an affirmative to the first question, and a sort of vague "you can use your fingers" for the second. Then he focused on tracing Astrid's thoughts.

No time to experiment…or to worry about _this_ type of connection having side effects. I climbed aboard and braced for takeoff, flattening down on his back and carefully tucking a couple fingers of each hand into the hollow spots – and taking a very big breath.

I almost passed out when his thoughts wrenched at mine. Then it was like I _had_ passed out, as we entered the freezing blackness of the Void. There was one rather odd difference this time, though: the scar on my chest was burning, straining like it was trying to rip open. The only sensation in my body.

Did this version's side effects _have_ to remind me of when Toothless was trying to kidnap me?

At least while we were in the Void, the rest of my body couldn't respond to the trauma by going into a panic attack. Though I could only vaguely hear my heart, it sounded like a steady rhythm – and I was holding my breath, so that didn't change.

Huh. That was something: there was nothing to hear outside the body I couldn't perceive, but I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. So it wasn't _total_ silence.

Then light blazed in my face, and my hearing came back with a definite shock. Astrid was screaming; so was a man I didn't recognize, but was probably her father.

I blinked quickly until my vision cleared and looked around. Toothless had chosen to appear sideways on the wall above Astrid's bed; Astrid was on the bed with her nightshirt pulled all the way off her torso (though not off her arms or untangled from her hair, obviously it was being used as makeshift restraints), though the drawstring on her pajama pants was still knotted tight; her father was all the way across the room, scrabbling for anything to use as a weapon…and he had no pants on.

_That's going to be in my nightmares…_

Fortunately for me and Toothless, the only "weapon" in the room was standing by Astrid's bed: her hockey stick. As Toothless dropped down on top of Astrid, I shifted my grip on him to be one-handed and snatched the stick to my side.

"Trust him?" I called down.

Astrid pulled in a strangled breath. "The dragon? More than my dad!" Then she shrieked again – briefly – before clearly remembering my telling her that the Void was airless and gulping down another breath. Her hands scrabbled at the sides of Toothless's head before finding the business end of her stick (the head; I had the handle along my left side, partly supporting my cast) and clutching at it.

She was kind of covering Toothless's face with her shirt…not like he needed to _see_ where he was going next.

Then we were back in the Void.

I was more than half sure that Astrid's second scream was because of Toothless's "rib-teeth" ripping into her. _There's not a lot of choice about whether or not to hurt what you grab with your chest-maw, is there?_ I wasn't upset, merely curious.

I got the sense of a sigh. _Not when in hurry. I heal her when we leave Void._

_Good_.

There was no blaze of light this time – Toothless had aimed for my bathroom, and the lights were off in there – but his claws snagged on the shower curtain in the re-entry, and he brought the whole rod down to swamp us all in it. Ignoring the curtain, he released Astrid as gently as he could and breathed his "breath of life" down the deep gash in her chest.

That, evidently, was the last straw.

With a muffled noise of desperation Astrid shoved Toothless back, clawed her way out from under the shower curtain, and crashed into something on the other side of the bathroom. A moment later I heard vomit hitting water.

"I guess nearly getting raped, dragged to a safe zone through outer space, getting your chest ripped open and then knit back together with fire, really takes it out of one," I joked at the back of Toothless's head. I know, I know, hardly respectful – especially considering that the conversation piece was just a few feet away and could probably hear me just fine. But I was shaking inside, and I hadn't even been the one targeted; humor helped me to feel better.

Toothless ignored me, sniffing curiously at a little heap of fabric on the floor.

Which, I suddenly realized, was Astrid's nightshirt. She must have pulled it off altogether in her haste to get out of the curtain.

She was standing over there, emptying her stomach into my toilet, _completely bare from the waist up._

My face went volcanic, and I loudly cleared my throat. "Say, um, Astrid…I…am going to jump Toothless back to my room. So I can get my crutches. Will you be okay in here for a little bit?"

The toilet flushed. Then Astrid's voice came back – raw, and broken with dry heaves or maybe sobs. "Can dragons…sense where danger is _before_ they teleport to an area?"

I blinked. "I think so." If he could locate a mind he knew so he could teleport to them, surely he could seek out minds to avoid them.

"Can you go get my clothes? And my homework? Maybe my toiletries? I'm moving in."

I gaped at Astrid – well, in the direction of her voice. Then I shrugged. "Okay."

"I am _not_ going back there. _Ever._"

"Not arguing." I patted Toothless's neck and conveyed what we were doing. He muttered his agreement, and we were off.

* * *

Mr. Hofferson's mind was completely silent for the entire time we were ransacking his house for Astrid's stuff; Toothless made it pretty clear that it was impossible for a living and aware creature to be that psychically quiet, so he'd either passed out in some room we didn't search or was running amok in the streets. I didn't relax, however, until we'd loaded all the essentials into her blanket and taken the huge bundle through the Void to my room.

_Should I put her clothes away for her, or just tell her where to put them?_ She'd never brought more than one outfit with her at a time when she came to spend the night, and simply kept it shoved in an overnight bag. I wouldn't feel right putting clean clothes away without folding and organizing them, but doing that with _Astrid's_ clothes – without her permission – just seemed like a pervert's hobby. I'd emptied her drawers by the armful just to avoid that feeling; being nervous about her dad possibly walking in had also been a distraction.

Toothless looked blankly at the side of the bundle with her clean clothes. Then he started nosing through the clothes at the other side (I'd grabbed _all_ her clothes, clean and dirty, and just took care to keep them apart) and pulling them to my hamper.

_Uh, pile them _nextto_ the hamper for now._ I didn't know how picky Astrid would be about losing her clothes in my laundry.

Even without the stuff in need of a wash, the "running-away-from-home" bundle was still something of a monstrosity nudged into the corner; it would be a relief when she came out of my bathroom and moved it into the guest room where she usually stayed when she slept over. I wondered how long she would stay, even if she didn't think she would ever go home.

As I pulled on my pajamas, Toothless trotted across the room with his thoughts chattering along about Astrid_._ Right before he reached the door, however, he suddenly went completely rigid and stared at it like the Dream Alpha was on the other side. Sinking to the floor, he…slithered…backwards to disappear under my bed.

_Not Astrid,_ his mind reported, heavily fear-laden, _not Gordon/Fisher/Scott._

_Not AstridFather?_ I just about wailed back, suddenly too frightened to speak.

_Not AstridFather,_ Toothless reassured. _Don't know him, but…_

He never got to finish the sentence before my bedroom door opened, and the opening was completely filled by a gigantic man with a gigantic beard and a fierce scowl.

"Dad!" I nearly had a panic attack on the spot. Rocking violently on my crutches, I managed to stand up beneath his gaze, trying hard _not_ to think about the dragon under my bed or the huge pile of girls' stuff that he would see if he just glanced to the left. "You're home – _early_! I, I was…um…everything's fine here, so…" Astrid and I had not discussed this; not really. I thought we had time to work it out, I hadn't been expecting him back until…

"You have tried to pass a lot of things off as _fine_ over the years when I return from the searches," Dad cut me off, "But _that_ is a whole new level for you." He gestured at my cast.

"Oh, um…this. Uh…" I offered the cast, "…Sign it?"

He made no move to pull out a pen or reach for one of mine. "What's this I hear about you getting into fights?"

Fights, plural? I only knew of one. Maybe two. "Uh, not knowing what you heard, I cannot offer comment on any of it." I lowered my leg again. "Except that panic attacks were involved."

Seriously, a miracle would be good right about now…

I heard the bathroom door swing open. Dad did, too, and he took a step back to look.

Astrid's voice echoed down the hall, crisp and respectful. "Hello, Mr. Haddock."

I have no idea if Astrid's entrance made things better or worse. I do know, however, that I was never more in love with her than I was at that moment. She'd nearly been raped, had her chest ripped open, been teleported, was healed in fire, and threw up – and she was still able to pull herself together enough to be presentable to the chief. I could practically _see_ her, with her pajamas all the way on and smoothed out (though my mental picture had her shirt inside out, since that was the only way I'd seen it) and her composure regained, standing straight and tall or perhaps leaning casually against the bathroom doorway. _Nothing you need concern yourself with, Sir_.

"Astrid, wasn't it?" Dad asked in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

I slumped on my crutches in relief, even though it was technically too early to count the day – well, night – won. I was probably grinning like a loon, and I couldn't bring myself to care.

"Penance. Coach Gordon suggested – strongly – that since it was my fault Hickory has a broken leg, I should make sure he wasn't in need of anything until the cast finally comes off."

I could hardly believe it. My real name actually sounded weirder than my nickname, when Astrid said it. Maybe it was that she hardly ever used my real name, or maybe it was that she made _Hiccup_ sound like it was a good quality while _Hickory_ got no such special treatment.

Wait, did she just say that she was babysitting me? I wasn't sure.

"So you've been spending nights here?" Dad wasn't sure either, by the sound of it.

"Past two weeks – thereabout." I could almost see her shrug. "I've actually gotten to like your son. He's been tutoring me when I haven't been making sure he doesn't fall and break his neck."

I really had been doing homework with her, not only on nights when she was visiting but also in the school library…but I wouldn't have called it tutoring. Astrid's mind was as razor-sharp as her tongue, and often just needed a little peace.

"Where have you been sleeping, exactly?" Dad looked back at me – no, he looked past me – and then back at Astrid. "You seem to be making…quite an impression."

I looked over my shoulder – and saw exactly what he'd seen: the indents in my mattress, too widespread to have just been made by me and my cast.

_Ack – Toothless!_ I hadn't thought that Dad would ever look at my bed for any reason, so I hadn't considered hiding _that_ evidence of a roommate; if I had, I would have maybe asked Toothless to flip the mattress for me.

Astrid, bless her heart, realized at once what Dad had seen and rolled with it for Toothless's sake. "He wakes up in a lot of pain sometimes; it's better for someone to be there, to make sure he gets his medicine and some water without any trouble. And if I'm _in_ the bed, I can keep him from rolling around and jarring that cast on everything and maybe falling on the floor." I could hear her smile, and it was a doozy. "And don't worry about me, sir: you've raised a perfect gentleman."

_Oh yeah, I definitely love this woman._

Dad sighed heavily. "Does your father know about this?"

If there was a hesitation, I didn't catch it. "I did tell him, back when I started; he might not remember, though. Now, if it's all right with you, Hiccup and I have school tomorrow and it is very late."

Dad nodded at her and gave me a slight smirk, before turning and thumping back downstairs. A minute later Astrid appeared in my doorway.

"Do you think he's going to come back up and check on us?" she whispered.

I shook off my stupid haze and dragged my gaze from her chest (were those _stars_ on her nightshirt?) up to her face. "I don't know. Why?"

"Because if he did, and we were sleeping in different rooms when he looked in…he might get suspicious about what we were _really_ doing before he got home, that we needed to change our MO so drastically. Then one or both of us would be in trouble – any answer he could come up with, right or wrong, would be bad."

"Oh." I thought about it. "He doesn't look in often, but he does look in; usually when he's heard something about me from my teachers." I shrugged. "And since, in the event of that happening Toothless was going to sleep _under_ the bed until further notice…you might as well sleep here. Your stuff's all still here, anyway."

Astrid nodded and closed the door, waiting – with relative patience – for me to climb into bed and settle down before approaching herself.

The first few minutes in the same bed were…awkward. My bed was kind of narrow for two people – unless they were _very_ good friends – and I'd never bothered to find another pillow because Toothless had been content to snuggle and share mine. Astrid had to fit right up against me, and she was so tense that clearly she wasn't comfortable with that idea.

_It's just like when we were first sharing,_ I sent to Toothless. _Only I was the rigid one, and you were the one at ease._

Toothless sent amusement back, and a kind of _she get used to it; you not fighting like herDaddy._

A non sequitur occurred to me. Technically, I'd seen Astrid naked from the waist up (that shirt stuck on her head didn't count), and I'd been in too much of a hurry figuring out exactly where I was and where Mr. Hofferson was that I didn't even perceive it. Granted, once we were safe Astrid would have beaten the crap out of me if I'd ogled her, but still…I didn't even have a good memory of that image. And now I was jealous of Toothless, who'd had a much longer and better view but was disinclined to appreciate it; the topic had never come up of what a male dragon considered "attractive" in a female, but it couldn't have been breasts because dragons didn't have any.

I sighed regretfully.

Astrid rolled over to put her mouth next to my ear. "What is it?" she murmured.

Her breath on my ear nearly shorted out my brain. I had to fight air into my lungs before I could speak, and by that point I knew that if I told Astrid exactly what I was thinking about…well, it wouldn't be pretty. "You'd probably strangle me if I answered that," I managed to say – in a whisper, fortunately.

"Would not."

"Yeah, actually, I think you would."

"After all the other crazy things you've survived saying to me, you actually think I'd kill you over this one? It couldn't possibly be worse than Fearless Astrid Hofferson; besides, I've resolved to use more passive responses to things that offend me."

I gave in. "Okay…I was merely regretting that, when Toothless and I came after you, I didn't take the opportunity to get a decent eyeful; I just sort of vaguely remember your shirt was most of the way off."

Astrid went so very, very still that I worried she would break her new resolution any minute. For a long time we both lay in silence, and I was too tense to fall asleep now.

"Astrid?" I finally ventured.

"I'm…amazed at myself."

"That you're restraining your rage?"

Astrid snorted into my hair. "That I can't decide if you seeing my bare chest is more offensive than you not remembering it afterwards."

I actually relaxed a little. "If the most offensive piece of information in the room is that I don't remember, I could probably ask Toothless to show me; he must have had a good look when he healed you back up tonight."

Astrid pulled a hand out from under the covers and brought it down on my face. "I should hit Toothless, except he's not even human and wouldn't know what he did wrong. Dragons don't wear clothes; whatever makes the sexes attractive to each other, it all hangs out all the time."

Since I'd already thought of that, I just moved her hand off my face.

"I've gone insane."

"What?"

"The first reason to not hit the dragon was _not_ that he would strike back and kill me."

I laughed. "Well, he probably wouldn't," then I had to pause as she covered my face again, this time more on my mouth. I mumbled the rest of my sentence through her hand. "He's from the least-aggressive class of dragons; he's more likely to just give you this sad-confused-puppy face."

Astrid stifled a laugh in my hair, finally relaxing against me.

"Astrid?"

"You should be sleeping."

"I was just wondering…why weren't you able to escape your dad on your own this time? I can't quite see that he would catch you by surprise, if he was that noisily drunk."

Astrid went quiet again. Then she shrugged. "He didn't. He _did_ catch me on the stairs, and he's fast even when drunk. I barely had time to get to my room and close the door before he was trying to ram through it; I never would have reached the window from where I'd started, even if I didn't stop to close the door. All I had time to do was barricade."

"Oh."

A moment later Astrid spoke again. "Hiccup?"

"Are you going to blame me tomorrow for lack of sleep?"

"He saw you, didn't he? You were _riding_ Toothless; he had to have seen you. And if he got a good enough look at you, he would go straight to your dad – just to report the attack in general – and by the time he described you well enough your dad would actually recognize you. Then _he'd_ be all over you demanding answers."

I blinked at the dark ceiling. "You didn't get a good look at me, did you? Everything was happening so fast, and then Toothless was on top of you…he and I were night riding before we came after you. I was wearing dark clothes, with a scarf on my face and my cast all wrapped up. I wasn't really thinking about hiding my identity, I just didn't want to be the bright spot in the moonlight, but…no. Your dad wouldn't have seen enough to give a good description to anyone."

"Hmm…"

"I'll grant you he would have seen that the dragon had a rider tonight. But he was drunk; if he has any intelligence left, he'll write it off as an alcohol-induced nightmare. Even if he does believe it and report it, who would believe him? Not my dad; not if he smells any beer at all on the other guy."

"Mmm." Astrid settled again.

"One more question."

"Mmm?"

"Did Gordon really suggest at one point that you stay over?"

For a moment, Astrid didn't answer. Then her arm drew around me. "He said I should take responsibility for the things I break; this probably wasn't what he meant, but…I've slept at people's houses for dumber reasons and enjoyed it a lot less."

Somehow, I liked hearing that.

"Go to _sleep_."

I carefully fitted my arm around Astrid and closed my eyes. Listening to her breath, I hoped she would still be there when I woke up.


	12. Unhealed

She was still there the next morning; I woke up to her hand running lazily over my chest and stomach. Her fingernails dragged along my scar, leaving a rather…unsettling sensation in their wake…but I kept my breathing deep and slow, wanting to prolong the moment in spite of how weird my scar felt. It was high time that I got used to someone touching that thing: around here, fingers jabbed at chests quite a lot when people were making their points. I'd be overreacting most of the time.

A crashing noise reverberated through the house, startling me rigid and making Astrid's hand tighten. It sounded like a chain of explosions.

"What the hell?" Astrid muttered into my neck.

Toothless prodded my mind, with much the same question – and I finally mustered enough alertness to register an answer.

"That's the front door. Someone's knocking."

Astrid burrowed deeper into my side, rubbing away any dents her nails might have left in my side before wrapping her arm firmly around me. "Whatever they're selling, I don't want any."

Toothless's follow-up was…similar. Only it was less irritation and more anxiety: he didn't know what was knocking, and didn't want to find out. He wanted to come out from under the bed and join me, in fact, and that was…simply not possible. My little bed wasn't big enough for three.

I sent back as much reassurance as I could before I started trying to disengage Astrid. "I should get that…"

Astrid hugged me tighter. "You should go back to sleep."

"With that racket? I can't send Toothless to get the door, and unless you want people to think this relationship has gone much farther than it actually has…"

Astrid made a noncommittal noise.

"…That leaves me."

"No," and somehow, even though her face was tucked into the curve of my neck and shoulder, she still sounded like I was being an idiot, "Toothless can't get the door for survival reasons, I can't get the door for social reasons, and _you_ can't get the door because you can't even get down the stairs without one of us helping you. Your dad's home; _he_ can bloody well get the door."

She had a point, but… "He won't be in a very good mood, waking up to that…"

"If they're going to make this much racket at this hour, they deserve whatever response they get."

"But if it's a legitimate complaint…a neutral-party sounding board would smooth things over before…"

Toothless prodded my mind: he'd picked up Dad's alert and _extremely grouchy_ consciousness, making its way through the house towards the front door.

"…Oh."

"What?"

"Too late. Dad's already up."

"How…" Astrid began. Then she paused. "Mind-scouting. Right."

Dad got the first word off. The minute the explosion chain stopped, a word rolled through the house like thunder: a loud, angry roar of "WHAT?"

I didn't understand the reply voice at all – by the time it echoed upstairs it sounded like absolute gibberish, so packed with terror that I wasn't even sure if it was a man or a woman. I hoped Dad was understanding it better.

He understood something, and simultaneously understood nothing at all. "HAVE YOU BEEN DRINKING AGAIN, HOFFERSON?"

Astrid went completely still beside me.

Dad stopped shouting, but I could still hear him loud and clear. "I can't believe you woke me up over an alcohol-induced nightmare. Your daughter, kidnapped? Ridiculous; and by a Night Fury, of all stupid things!"

I grinned. I had suspected this, and now I was being proven right: the truth was so insane, so outrageous, that nobody would ever believe it unless they had seen it with their own eyes or would take the word of a _very_ reliable eyewitness. A known alcoholic, Mr. Hofferson was _not_ a reliable witness.

"Astrid?"

"Hmm?"

"My dad will never believe we slept through all that banging and shouting, so we might as well get up: at some point really soon he's going to drop _how_ he knows you're not kidnapped, and after that 'alcohol-induced nightmare' _your_ dad's not going to believe you're okay until he sees you." Sensing her hesitation I added, "Nothing's going to happen while my father the Chief is standing there, if that's what you're worried about."

"I'm not worried." Proving her point, Astrid kicked the blankets off both of us and got up. Then she hauled me out of bed, grabbed some of her clothes from the pile, and slipped out – presumably to get dressed in the bathroom.

I struggled into my own clothes, shamelessly eavesdropping on the rest of the conversation through Toothless's ears. Mostly it was a riot act about Astrid being…well…so bitchy and physically hostile to people who angered her that nobody would want to steal her away against her will (and I would give him that; Astrid could summon enough attitude to be the worst hostage on the planet if she wanted), with a little "Night Fury attacks have always been on lone targets" thrown in.

Then the bombshell I was expecting.

"Of course your daughter's alive! She's been living here the past month, playing nurse to my son as restitution for breaking his leg!"

Astrid poked her head in the door, smirking at the drama on the doorstep. "Best curtain call ever. You ready to go take a bow?"

I grinned back at her. "What would you have done if I wasn't? You didn't even knock before you looked in." I picked up my crutches and gingerly hobbled over to her.

"Shouldn't you be doing without the crutches by now? It's been a month, and the cast is just not that big."

"I, um…" I paused in my doorway and lowered my voice, even though there was no reason for anyone downstairs to hear me. "It feels weird when I try to put weight on it. Not painful, but…it's…it doesn't seem to be getting any stronger."

Astrid made a face at me like she didn't quite get it, but she didn't press the issue as she took my arm and matched my gait with her own. I understood both her lack of understanding and why she didn't argue; on the one hand, how would my leg get stronger if I didn't make any effort to use it? But on the other hand, if I was capable of walking on my own there would be no reason for her to stay; the more pathetic I looked for this first show, the better.

We made quite a sight on the stairs: our walk was even, but it was clear I was only keeping balanced at that speed of descent because I had support from Astrid.

Mr. Hofferson's face was deathly pale; all the beer from last night (and probably months on end before last night) had taken a terrible toll on his health. His expression when he saw us was priceless, though: he literally could not comprehend how his daughter was _here_, when just last night she was carried away by a teleporting monster.

"You-you-you…" he sputtered. Then his gaze riveted on her left arm – and the bruises that hadn't faded completely yet. "What happened to your arm, girl?"

I wondered if Astrid was going to…

"Accident," she blew off casually. "If you'll excuse me, we both need breakfast before school and Hickory can't get his own dishes right now."

It wasn't that easy, of course: Dad stopped us and looked more carefully at Astrid's arm. "I didn't see these last night. They look like a boy's handprints."

Astrid shrugged again. "A couple days ago Hickory was having a bad dream, brought on by one of his panic attacks; I was rubbing his chest trying to calm him back down before he triggered another one; he grabbed my arm like a lifeline and didn't let go until he woke up. He didn't even know he was hurting me. I'd say that qualifies as accidental."

Dad made a noncommittal noise, gave me a more-stern-than-usual look, and let us continue our path to the kitchen. As we edged through the door I sighed.

"_Why_ do I think I'm going to be hearing about this later?"

Astrid shrugged. "It was hardly your fault you had that particular panic attack; it was Scott's. If I were to blame anybody for these bruises it would probably be him." She left me standing in the middle of the kitchen and went looking for breakfast.

"Good to know." I watched Astrid bustle around the kitchen assembling bowls of cereal. "Sorry I can't help with that, by the way."

"What do you think is wrong with your leg, that you can't put any weight on it after all this time?"

"I don't _know_…but I have a theory."

Astrid turned to face me. "Does it have anything to do with…" her eyes flicked briefly past me, her face froze for just an instant, and she finished, "…the Night Fury attack?"

_Dad's right behind me, isn't he?_ I took a deep breath. "Yes. For all I know, whatever he…did to me that day…interfered with my body's ability to heal. I might need this cast longer than the doctors thought." I let that air back out in a sigh as I sat down to start eating. "Which will be _absolutely fantastic_, being unable to run for _more_ than two months."

"After school is out, you're going straight back to the hospital for X-rays." He really was there, and that was not a suggestion: I was getting analyzed whether I wanted to or not. And with that he went to get his own breakfast.

Astrid growled miserably and stirred her cereal. "Great, I was feeling guilty enough thinking that I'd be staring at that cast for just two months."

To the end of my days, I will never know what motivated me to say what came out next. It was an _order_ to my _dad_, it was crazy, and it was an astonishingly far cry from a boy who preferred to keep his life and limbs intact – which I was, until about five weeks ago, it seems.

"Dad, if something turns out to be really wrong with my foot, tell them to take it off."

"What?"

Astrid's spoon clattered to the table as she stared at me in astonishment. "That's not funny."

"It wasn't a joke. If it turns out to be a choice between a prosthetic and dragging a mutilated limb around for a half-year, I'd rather amputate half of it. And I wouldn't blame you, Astrid: the Night Fury would ultimately be responsible for the lost limb, not you." Eventually I would stop, rethink, and second-guess; since I sounded so confident, though, I decided to run with it for now.

"Hickory," Dad swallowed, "I will take that into consideration, but…let's not get ahead of ourselves. It might not be that serious."

I couldn't help but stare in fascination: my dad was shaking in his boots. Why? Surely not because I volunteered for an amputation – he was in favor of the whole, _if it can't be saved before it kills the owner then hack it off and cauterize the stump_ school of thought. He personally whacked off Gordon's leg, I heard, when it had been poisoned by a dragon. Saved his life.

_Wait, it's not the amputation: it's me!_ I had finally become at least a version of the boy he thought I should be – and he wasn't ready for the change. He hadn't really thought I would ever be anything other than a hiccup, and so he wasn't prepared at all for a sign that I might be more.

"All right," I said with a shrug. "We'll see the X-rays and then we'll talk about it. Who knows? It might be my imagination and there's nothing wrong at all."

Dad looked relieved.

Good for him. My stomach was sinking rather horribly, showing disagreement with my own breezy words of _nothing wrong at all._

* * *

"What do you mean, it hasn't healed?"

Those words of my Dad were the first I heard as I was wheeled back out of the X-ray room, confirming that my gut was right: all was not well inside the cast.

"I'm afraid that's all there is to it," the doctor replied, waving at a pair of photos on the wall that were presumably then-and-now images of my fracture. "The bones aren't showing any sign of fusing. And these new dark patches…I can't explain them at all."

I took control of my chair and rolled up to see for myself. Doc was right, it did look strange – like the bone, muscle, and even skin was slowly-but-surely coming apart, and leaving ever-widening holes behind. And, as both he and Dad said, the original fracture hadn't set.

"Hiccup," Dad began, objecting to my looking.

"That would actually be pretty cool if it wasn't my leg," I commented. "Looks like the only thing holding it together is the cast." I glanced at Dad. "Now what?"

At first he ignored me. "Can you fix it?"

"First we'd have to take a biopsy to establish why the tissues are coming apart. Then…" the doctor shook his head, "…it would depend on what's wrong. If this has anything to do with that Night Fury, well…there might not be any fixing it. You know these dragons and their weird venoms."

Dad sighed. "Yes…all right, get your sample. Do what you can."

* * *

_Screaming. Lots of screaming._

_Not human, not dragon. Metal._

_Dry, brittle cracking, like a cocoon opening._

There_ was a human voice. Swearing in astonishment._

_Against my better judgment I opened my eyes and raised my head._

_Then _I_ was screaming._

_The leg wasn't just deathly white, it was _dead_. It was slightly crooked on the table, betraying its unhealed fracture. It was withered, and dark holes like eyes peered up; I would not have been shocked, only more horrified, if the holes really did blink or if something nasty crawled out of them. The foot was split in half nearly to the ankle, and it wasn't bleeding; I hadn't even felt it break._

_Someone forced me to lie back down, and covered my nose and mouth with something._

_I managed to stop screaming, but started talking instead – and getting progressively less coherent as the anesthetic took hold. I think I was demanding they get rid of the leg._

_It wasn't my leg. Not anymore._

* * *

I woke with a pounding headache. Astrid was sitting by the bed, resting her head on the mattress and stroking my hand.

"Astrid?"

She bounced up and blinked curiously at me. "Hiccup?"

I cocked an eyebrow. "You were expecting somebody else in the bed?"

"Ha-ha. Just wondering if you were back." She looked relieved.

"Back? Where was I going to go with…" I sat up, my gaze veering to my feet.

Foot.

My wish had been granted. If that nightmare had indeed been reality, my foot had been too badly damaged to save and so they'd taken it off. I seemed to still have a knee, though; I could see it bending alongside its partner as I moved my legs, one short and one long.

"…One foot?"

Astrid eyed me. "You're taking this very well. Considering."

I shrugged. "Eh, who knows? Maybe the horror of this new mutilation will slap me in the face when I get back on the crutches." I rolled my eyes around the room – and suddenly fixated on the clock.

_6:50._

Hadn't we gotten to the hospital at three-thirty?

I tried to add up the hours. Dad being chief was big-time convenient – we cut straight through the waiting and red tape, and I was getting X-rayed within fifteen minutes of arrival. Surely the cast came off within fifteen minutes of _that_, and amputation all-in-all couldn't possibly take two hours.

"Hiccup?"

I refocused on Astrid. "When was the amputation completed?"

Astrid looked at her watch. "A little after four."

"So what happened in the other two and a half hours?"

"They were either nightmares, or panic attacks, or phantom pains. You were screaming…and trying to throw yourself off the bed. The doctors were reluctant to sedate you any further than they already had, so they tied you down with soft restraints." Astrid shuddered. "Your eyes…the last time I saw those eyes, you were in the grip of one of your fits. But this time was a little better, because I could also tell you were unconscious."

"That made it better?" I could hardly imagine that Astrid could still look at me after I'd gone postal, whether I was awake or asleep.

"Sure. When you were in that panic attack that day, I got the idea that you knew exactly what you were doing and didn't care if anyone got hurt. You'd care and regret it when you came back out of it, but by then it would be too late. This, though, was more like after I dosed you…you know, when you grabbed my arm. You were asleep; you didn't know what your body was up to."

"Oh." I tried to settle against the pillows. "How did you wind up sitting with me?"

Astrid adjusted my pillows for me so that I could sit up. "That's easy. I rushed straight in here and started spouting all kinds of nonsense while I rubbed your chest, and pretty much dared the docs to throw me out while I was doing that."

I could well imagine. Death-glare of blue fire.

"And they let me be, since you really were calming down under my hands." Astrid touched my head. "You were going on and on about the Dream Alpha, by the way."

"I was?" I couldn't decide if that was good or bad – or if it would turn out to be good or bad later, when I tried to tell somebody while fully conscious.

"Yeah. Poor things, to suffer under that kind of tyranny." Her fingers laced in my hair. Stilled. "I know how that feels."

I drummed my fingers on the mattress. "I don't want a nurse at home teaching me how to walk again. I want you. You wouldn't treat me any different." Besides, if she was my assistant, she would have to stick around and then not go home to her abusive dad.

Astrid blinked at me, evidently thinking my words were a non sequitur. Then, making the connection, she let go of my hair and punched my shoulder. "Did I ask for your help?"

I laughed. "You never ask for help: _I_ ask for help." I wondered if she'd make that leap. She didn't ask for help even when she needed it, so if _I_ asked _her_…that could be construed as tricking her into accepting help, but I preferred to think of it as letting her save face. _If anyone gets curious, I'm the only one in the room needing assistance._

Evidently she did get it, because she smiled. Then she shocked my breath away by kissing me, full on the lips, right as my dad walked in.


	13. Hi, Stormfly

_**Astrid's POV**_

Even I could tell that Toothless was confused by the amputation. The minute Hiccup and I were both closed away from the world, the dragon was out from under the bed and sniffing the stump – and giving such bewildered expressions at both of us, and looking around like the missing foot was somewhere in the bedroom.

I stifled a laugh, and inwardly gave thanks that he wasn't blaming me for the foot's disappearance.

"Just…act like normal," Hiccup suggested, pulling himself carefully into bed. "He'll settle down."

Somehow I doubted that…but I turned the lights off and slid under the covers next to him anyway. Sure enough, Toothless's feet continued to pad around the room – though more slowly – and his throat produced soft muttering sounds.

* * *

"_Astrid, come here. Astrid, come here."_

I jarred out of a sound sleep to a hand pushing on my collarbone. It was Hiccup, shoving at me with almost enough force to throw _himself_ out of bed – and talking in his sleep.

"Astrid, come here. Quickly."

_Why's he pushing me away and telling me to come at the same time?_ Was he dreaming that _I_ was somewhere other than right next to him – that the person next to him wasn't me?

I put my arms around him, tugging him closer and away from the uneasy precipice that was the edge of the bed. "Hiccup, you're dreaming. I'm right here." I stroked his hair and murmured semi-verbal reassurances in his ear.

Hiccup didn't settle. In fact, he got more agitated – pushing harder, talking…not _louder_, but more intensely. I began to get worried.

"Wake up, Hiccup – you're dreaming."

"As…come…I…" he started sounding like he couldn't breathe.

_Okay, drastic-measures time._ I rolled away and reached for his EpiPen – and groaned when my fingers grazed it right off the nightstand. I shaded Hiccup's eyes and turned the lamp on, squinting in the light (which fortunately wasn't that bright; he had enough sense to have a _low_-watt bedside lamp).

Hiccup's hand suddenly grabbed my wrist. Hard.

I turned to look and nearly had heart failure. His eyes were open, and fixed blankly on me. They were devoid of the spark I knew; it was _like_ both when he went crazy at Scott and when he freaked out on the operating table, but at the same time different. Before I could decide what it was, he lifted up a little on his other arm and spoke again.

"Toothless wants you for something." Then he closed his eyes and fell back down, releasing my wrist. He looked like he'd never moved.

_Toothless?_

No green eyes peered over the edges of the bed; and Toothless usually came out when Hiccup got particularly restless, to settle him back down by either French-kissing him or mauling his neck. Where _was_ Toothless?

I sat up and looked around – and saw the open window. Come to think of it, there was an awful lot of noise outside for the middle of the night. Carefully sliding out of bed, I crept to the window and peered out. It was very bright…

Because the moon was full.

_Oh._ _Another raid._

Had Toothless snuck out to join them – surely not, he wouldn't do that to Hiccup – had he gone to join the fight _against_ them, and gotten caught?

I looked down. It was a longer drop than I wanted to do, but the wall didn't look hard to climb.

My hockey stick was the only weapon I had available, so I grabbed that and tossed it down ahead of me. It was tough plastic, didn't even look organic, so I wasn't worried about a dragon stealing it; I did wait a few seconds after throwing it down, to give any dragons that might have noticed it to come and discover that it wasn't food, before coming down myself.

Nobody noticed me.

Which I appreciated, because I was in my pajamas and barefoot and armed with a stupid hockey stick. I _really_ wasn't ready for a fight.

I hoped Toothless wasn't _in_ one.

He had to still be on the property. I didn't want to think about what would happen if he'd gone off.

"Toothless?" I whispered, tiptoeing along the wall of the building. "Toothless, where are you?"

The garage? The doors were all closed, but…

When I was sure I could get to the garage without being spotted, I sprinted across the smooth path and listened at the human-sized door. _Something_ was in there, making a lot of noise; not like a scavenger, more like a fight.

I turned the handle and slid inside. "Toothless?" I called softly, holding my stick at a defensive angle.

Eyes blazed in the dark; little red eyes, not Toothless's big green ones. Then all I saw was stars as the eyes' owner smashed me into the wall with the force of a truck.

* * *

Next thing I knew, I was in a catfight. Someone was ripping at my face with long nails; I grabbed her wrists and pushed back as hard as I could, and we started rolling around on the floor. She was trying to restrain me however she could; I was having none of it.

"SUBMIT!" She screamed at me.

"HELL NO!" I screamed back as I managed to pin her. "I wouldn't break for my father no matter how much he beat me, so why should I break for you?"

The other girl stopped fighting and stared at me like I'd said something insane.

She looked really odd, to be honest. She had a rather prominent nose with large nostrils, and her lips were thin; her pale and very spiky hair just increased her resemblance to some sort of parrot.

A parrot with red eyes. I knew those eyes, though I'd only seen them for a second.

_I'm in a dreamscape. I'm fighting mind-to-mind with a dragon!_ Was I winning? I wasn't sure. I was on top of her, but what did that mean?

"You've severed from him?"

I blinked. What did _that_ mean?

Whatever it meant, I had no intention of losing the upper hand. "Why does it matter whether I did or not?" I asked dismissively.

"He is half of your name's foundation; I can smell it. But there's no, no…" her wrists jerked in my grasp, and her nails caught at my hair, "…no loyalty tie." She sounded bewildered.

I shrugged. "So he's half my foundation, so what? Since my mother and uncle died, he hasn't been much of a role model for me. Why should I look to him when he's not helping me grow?"

The dragon-girl under me almost seemed to collapse. "Would that we had that choice."

_Choice of…_

Wait.

Dream Alpha. The most important figure in most (if not all) dragons' minds around here, but this particular DA was abusing the tails off his subjects. Just like my dad was doing to me, but I'd escaped…and I'd escaped emotionally long before I got out physically. I didn't answer to him on an immediate daily basis; I didn't _really_ answer to anybody.

"Why don't you?" It seemed a reasonable question. "There's always a choice; you just have to be brave enough. If you've had enough of eating DA shit, just sever yourself from him and…"

"And I would die," the dragon interrupted. "Most dragons cannot stand alone within our own minds; we need to feed from the dreamscape."

I gaped for a second, momentarily unable to comprehend what I'd heard. Dragons _literally_ needed each other to survive? A psychic network? But that was…

The dragon writhed under me, flinging me off – but I reflexively got my footing and all she accomplished was getting us deadlocked.

Successfully staying on equal footing seemed to have restarted my brain. Well, my ability to think. "Fuck that – if that were true, how is Toothless still alive after a month and a half?"

The dragon cocked her spiky-haired head. "The black fellow who captured me?"

So Toothless _was_ in the garage somewhere. He set me up.

"Dream Alphas _are_ self-sustaining; he smells like one, sort of, so perhaps he has that talent. What did you do to him, anyway? I have never smelled a dragon with so little Void before."

_That_ got my attention. "First of all, that was Hiccup, not me." Like that would matter, considering this dragon hasn't met Hiccup. "Second, how can you have a dragon that is _sort of_ a Dream Alpha?" I'd gotten the idea that that wasn't a _sort of_ kind of thing: a dragon was a DA or it wasn't.

"I don't know; it doesn't make any sense."

I made a note to ask Hiccup about this in the morning. Provided I survived the night. "Okay, we'll get back to that later. Let me just recap here: a whole bunch of you dragons get together to make a giant dreamscape, and you all get feedback from it."

"…Yes."

"Feedback you need to survive."

The dragon released me and settled back. "Yes."

"And a Dream Alpha holds the whole thing together and organizes it."

"Something like that."

"But _your_ DA is using the dreamscape against you lot, forcing you to feed him in exchange for the feedback you can't live without."

The dragon hung her head.

I let my tone sharpen with disgust. "And you're just admitting defeat?"

Her head came up again with a rattle of spiky hair, her eyes blazing. "I am Stormfly, I do not admit defeat!"

I decided right then I liked that fire. "Good to hear, Stormfly." I let go of her wrists. "Now, what would happen if you did sever yourself? As much detail as you know."

Stormfly glared at me…though she seemed to be thinking. "I…would…" She slowly shook her head. "Well, I would die. What details are you looking for?"

Fair question. "How long would it take?"

"To die? Why does that…" she trailed off and gaped at me – and for the first time, true hope gleamed. "If it took long enough there would be time to re-link…to another network – or another Dream Alpha."

"I'm _sure_ Toothless would be glad to let you link to him." Actually I didn't care what he thought. He set me up, he could damn well feed Stormfly. "You would be free. Well, free_r._ Toothless wouldn't ask you to work your tail off bringing him tributes."

"All right, I'll do it!" Stormfly scratched her head – a quick little gesture – and suddenly looked a little bashful. "Can…can I ask a favor?"

"What?" What favor could I possibly do?

"Ah…can I hold your name?"

My mouth opened and closed a couple of times. _What does that mean?_ "Uh…"

"You are strong – and you only have ties of loyalty when you _want_ them, because they are not essential to your survival. I just want the sign of your name…for…" her hand darted out to flick my bangs back, "…for luck, I suppose."

"Wait, I never did introduce myself, did I?" I shrugged. If _that_ was all she meant, I certainly had no problem with it. "I am Astrid Hofferson."

* * *

And then I woke up in bed.

"Whuf?" I mumbled into the pillow as I tried to sit up. Then I groaned as a couple dozen hammers started banging inside my head.

"Steady there."

_Hiccup?_

Well, of course he was still here; it was his room, and with only one leg he wasn't going anywhere very fast until I – his human crutch – woke up.

"Turn off the radio," I muttered grouchily. "Or change the station, or _something_. It's too early for a bass drum solo. And for the gods' sake, why are the curtains open?"

"Do you…have a…hangover?"

I turned to squint through the much-too-bright light at Hiccup, who was looking at me with a bizarre expression mixing concern, confusion, and caution. "If this is a hangover, I'm never drinking again."

"You drink?" Hiccup waved off my reply – which was just as well, because it would have been _no comment._ "Take your time waking up; Toothless snuck me to the bathroom earlier."

"What time is it?" If it was any earlier than ten, I was going back to sleep. Morning classes were cancelled after raid nights, because all the teachers were called out to help with cleanup, so there were no demands on my time.

"I don't know; that Deadly Nadder knocked my alarm clock off the nightstand when she teleported you back in."

Okay, forget sleep.

I hadn't yet gotten to the point where I was facing the events of last night, but that simple observation made it pretty clear that Stormfly (a Deadly Nadder? I hadn't really _seen_ her) had been real.

"Stormfly…is she all right?"

"Is that her name?" Hiccup shrugged. "She seems to be. She rigged up a pocket-universe after she dropped you on me." He rubbed his shoulder and half-glared at me.

_Don't look at me; _I_ didn't tell her to drop me on you instead of on the bed._

I slowly dragged myself up to a sitting position. "Stormfly linked to Toothless."

Hiccup barked out a short, ironic – and too loud – laugh before noticing my expression and lowering his volume. "She certainly did; I noticed the earthquake in the dreamscape."

"She said something odd beforehand, though." I thought back carefully. "She said that he smelled…_sort of_ like a Dream Alpha. How can you have a _sort-of_ Dream Alpha? Isn't that an all-or-nothing deal?"

"Hmm…" Hiccup started thinking. Hard. I could practically see him sinking into himself, turning that information around in his head and perhaps discussing it with Toothless.

While he did that, I dragged myself off the bed and went to the bathroom.

A few minutes later, feeling more human after having used the facilities and washed up, I returned to catch Hiccup coming back to the surface.

"Well?"

Hiccup shook his head. "What Stormfly was smelling was her old Alpha's energy being pulled in by Toothless. _All_ I did was change his name so that he couldn't teleport home; I didn't sever him from his Dream Alpha." He shrugged. "I didn't even know he _had_ one."

I thought about that one – and what it meant. "So he's now pulling in double energy – enough for him _and_ Stormfly?" At Hiccup's nod I went on to the pertinent question. "Is the Dream Alpha likely to notice that a double-portion of energy is going to some dragons that aren't returning?"

I don't know if I was hoping to surprise Hiccup or not, but I didn't succeed. He nodded again, soberly. "It won't happen immediately, but…yes, he'll eventually notice. Which is why we need more dragons in this refugee net."

"What?" _More_ dragons? When he just said…

"Toothless showed me the dreamscape as it is now, with Stormfly included, and a picture of how it was without her; he helped me run the numbers, and our results show that a network of six dragons should be self-sustaining. Once we have that minimum of six, Toothless can sever from the Dream Alpha."

That made…sense…though I dearly wanted to call Hiccup out on that _should._


	14. Human Boosters

_**Hiccup's POV**_

Over the next two nights we managed to trap and link three – no, four – of the raiding dragons. Two of them were conjoined twins, and needed both me _and_ Astrid to argue them into trying the network. Only one of the new ones was female, a Gronkle; Astrid said that she seemed to be sensitive about her weight – apparently, in the human dreamscape, she had appeared plus-size.

"I didn't know you dragons could be overweight," I said to Toothless as we studied the network.

"Meatlug is a rarity these days: a dragon genetically predisposed to heaviness," Toothless replied.

I didn't have to ask why it was so rare. Dragons that couldn't _quickly_ drop their loads and flee were dragons that got eaten by their own Dream Alpha. "I'll bet she was really excited to cut her old link and build a new one," I said instead, following his suit and not directly referencing the Dream Alpha.

Neither of us were sure if we _could_ attract his attention by talking about him in my dreamscape, but neither of us wanted to take the chance.

"Oh, yes," Toothless nodded soberly. "She was living on luck and she knew it."

I looked out at the network again. Energy ran from Toothless to the other dragons and back; I could make out Astrid's dreamscape – a stone fortress resting against Stormfly's dreamscape – and it seemed to be doing something to the energy flowing back from there. A column of liquid light ran from…presumably the Dream Alpha…and flowed into Toothless's dreamscape.

It was an awfully big column…

"You can cut that, right?" I asked.

Toothless didn't answer right away, staring across at his dreamscape and the flows of energy to and from it. He drew in a deep breath, looking pensive.

"This is a world of dreams. My…ability to cut that link depends on my belief and my desire."

"So if you think you can, and you want it badly enough, you can?"

"Yes. Only…" Toothless looked at me. "…I'm not sure I want to just yet. The network…is there really enough energy here to be self-sustaining?"

I looked again, trying to visualize the energy in a way that would make it clear how much was going around and from what sources. Everybody was obviously getting all the energy they needed right now…

_Water. Lots of water._

Some kind of liquid, anyway; the components of which were different enough from each other that it didn't readily mix, making it obvious who was sending it. Meatlug's energy was a muddy brown; Stormfly's was deep blue. The twins' energy was yellow-green (in two hues, though they were very similar), and the brutal Hookfang's was red-orange. Toothless's was a deep, dark midnight-blue…

And the Dream Alpha's energy was dark blood-red. And there was a lot of that going around – without it, there would be _barely_ enough to keep these dragons alive.

I was just about to acknowledge that we might have to add another dragon when I looked at Stormfly again and noticed something odd. Her dreamscape was producing more energy than any of the other dragons here (except for Toothless, who had the Dream Alpha's backing).

"Energetic, isn't she?" I asked, pointing at Stormfly.

"Hmm?" Toothless looked more carefully. "Yesss…"

I looked at Toothless's energy flow and saw that his near-black energy was tied with Stormfly's blue for generated amount. "You and Stormfly are generating more of your own energy than any of the other dragons are, and Astrid and I are the only distinct variables." I thought that one over. "We must be acting like catalysts – possibly supplying you two with some of our own energy…"

"But you humans can only share with, and amplify the energy production of, one dragon each – that's why you haven't enhanced the others' performances." Toothless scratched his head. "If there were more humans in the network…"

I tried to think of other humans I could tell about the dragons, and came up completely blank. "Pretty sure that wouldn't be safe."

Toothless laughed ruefully. "This _is_ a world of _dreams_, Hiccup. It is possible that we can include humans without their thinking it is anything other than a dream."

"Okay, _that_ might work. The only questions now, I guess, are…who do we connect in, and how?"

"The _how_ is easy. You are linked directly to me and Astrid is linked to Stormfly; we simply send the unlinked dragons to the chosen humans, and connect them that way. As for whom…should we trust them to find their own partners?"

Should we? I wasn't sure. "You're their alpha now. If you gave them an order – told them to make _absolutely sure_ that they weren't seen or heard while they were seeking their human partners – would they follow it?"

Toothless considered that. "They survived to adulthood by following orders. They will obey."

"Then yeah, they can pick out their own people. Make sure they understand, both that they mustn't be discovered, and that their partners can't find out that they're dragons."

Toothless looked at me curiously; then he caught me from behind in a hug and rested a hand over my heart. "You seem sad about their obedience."

I considered that. "They were slaves. It was obey or die. I guess in some ways I hope they someday become confident enough to disobey." Right now, though, that obedience would serve us well.

"I see."

"By the way, how are they – the new ones – getting along with Stormfly?" I'd heard they all moved into her pocket universe; Toothless was the only one physically living in my world.

I felt Toothless shrug. "No worries. They expanded the realm to hold more nests." A pause. "You know, it's possible that we could use their nests to make your village 'disappear' from the searching minds of other dragons."

Whatever I thought he would say next, it wasn't that. "You can do that? Even though the raiders already know that the village is here?"

"I'm not sure; at any rate, making the _entire_ village invisible would probably require a lot more than four nests. But…"

"Yeah, it _would_ be a goal to attempt." If hostile dragons couldn't find the village, they couldn't raid it. "But let's add more humans to this web first. How do we explain the plan to the others?"

* * *

I came out of a hard, _hard_ sleep to a banging on my door.

Getting up was the last thing I wanted to do at that moment – I felt more tired than I did when I first went to bed, and my head felt like a boulder. Given the way Astrid actually _snarled_ and jerked my pillow away to cover her own head, she didn't want to get up either.

_Toothless…who…?_

I sensed Toothless poke his nose out from under my bed. After a long moment his thoughts prodded ever-so-carefully at my mind. _Scott._

Why was _Scott_ here – and at this ungodly hour?

Actually, what time _was_ it?

_Half-between dawn and apogee._ The dragon could tell that without even going to the window.

What was wrong with me anyway? Not even painkillers did this – at least not the stuff I was supposed to be using. And even if someone had swapped out my pills for something fancier, I was nearly positive that I hadn't taken any last night.

Toothless prodded my mind again, this time unlocking my memory of the night before. The other dragons had opened my mind – _and_ Astrid's – and had compared our notes on the people we knew. Probably so that they wouldn't be searching blind for their partners.

All well and good, but it had been horribly uncomfortable and took all my effort to _not_ throw them back out before they'd compiled full dossiers. Astrid must have had the same experience – if not worse.

Suddenly I rolled toward the edge of the bed, propelled by Astrid's foot; I barely managed to catch myself before I went all the way off.

_Stormfly shielded some; I tried to help; bad memory still bad._

Yeah, about what I'd thought. Definitely she'd had a worse experience.

I managed to get my crutches and get to something resembling an upright position. "I got it, Astrid…you go back to sleep."

Astrid muttered something and curled into a tight ball, completely hidden by my pillow and blankets.

Scott opened the door before I could reach it and nearly ran me over as he came in. "Why are you still in bed?"

"Do _not_ mess with me, Scott." I dropped onto the edge of the bed and massaged my temples. "I didn't sleep well."

"What, did you spend the night partying?" Scott waggled his eyebrows, somehow looking provocative and derisive at the same time.

Astrid growled – like a bear in my bed – and glared out from under the pillow. "Out. Now."

Scott leaned over to peer sideways at Astrid. "You sure you want another round with…"

"I said OUT!" Astrid came up, dark circles under blazing eyes. "Or do you want to feel as bad as I do right now?"

Scott retreated.

"Nice," I commented.

"Whatever." Astrid climbed out of bed and went to close the door. "You realize that'll be all over the school tomorrow?"

"Just at the moment, I don't care. I have bigger things to worry about than the rumors of our extracurricular activities."

"Like what?"

"Like I think one of our 'dependents' wants to partner with Scott."

**Scott's POV**

I still didn't get what Astrid saw in that _Hiccup_. He's a wuss – and he's now a one-legged wuss. Since when did Astrid like that? Astrid didn't like anything, not even the Scottmaster.

Or…maybe this was just a therapy thing. Gods knew, Hiccup needed it.

I stepped into the bathroom, contemplating how I could maneuver that information to my advantage – and then I noticed that a hot bath had been drawn for me. _Very_ hot: the room was so full of steam that I couldn't see much of anything. The water was probably hot enough to melt my flesh right off.

I considered getting in anyway. Then I decided to _not_, and just say that I had. I stripped off my shirt so that the sweat could roll down my burly chest without getting trapped.

Yes, I wiped the mirror off too. So would you, if you looked this good sweaty.

So I was right in the middle of a good flex, when something poked my back. I turned around and demanded of the steamy bathroom, "What?"

That was the plan, anyway, but I didn't quite finish the question. Just as my mouth was wide open, something was shoved down my throat and given a twist.

I punched out in self-defense – not _completely_ sure I hit anything – and doubled over coughing.

"Nice jab."

I admit I was startled, but I tried hard not to let it show. I straightened up again and looked at the stranger who had somehow gotten into the bathroom with me.

Holy shit, he looked like a wrestler; a _pro_ wrestler, at that. He was completely naked except for briefs and a flashy belt, showing off rock-solid muscle and tiger-stripe tattoos (those red and black stripes _had_ to be tattoos; paint would have run in all this steam). Oh yeah, he also had a mask…at least, I think it was a mask and not face-tattoos…it had white fangs that sure looked real. His hair stood up like spiky black antlers.

"Yours wasn't so bad either," I admitted, rubbing my throat – then I wondered why I admitted that. "Who invited you anyway?"

He considered that. "A…friend of Hiccup's."

What was with this guy's accent? "Hiccup" sounded so weird like that…and somehow I still understood exactly who he was referencing. "Did he tell you about me?"

"A little; enough that I wanted to learn more, and directly from your mouth. Starting with your name."

"What, he didn't tell you that?"

He smiled – and I was suddenly more than half convinced that those fangs would be real even if that mask was a face-tattoo. "I wish to hear it from _you_."

I straightened, determined that this guy not see me shiver. "I am Scotland Jorgenson, master quarterback of the Berkians!" I shouted with all the bravado I had, pounding my chest and trying to convince myself that this guy hadn't scared me at all.

That smile stretched into a grin that had way more sharp teeth than it was supposed to, and he raised his fists to the touchdown stance. "I am Hookfang," he replied – I think – "master of the burning armor! Dragons and warriors alike fear me!"

I wasn't surprised at all that even dragons feared this guy. He looked like he could wrestle the Chief to a draw, if not an outright victory.

Then he lowered his fists and shrugged. "_Most_ dragons," he amended. "There are some that even my monstrous power cannot intimidate; them, I would need a partner before I could conquer." To my surprise, that massive fellow knelt – though his yellow eyes stayed locked with mine. "I would be honored if you, Scotland the Quarterback, would be my partner against them. Your strength with mine would be a force no enemy could withstand."

I considered. Okay, I pretended to consider. That gesture of kneeling was _strongly implying_ that he would allow me to direct him; having his power at my command was a sweet concept.

"All right then." I offered my right hand – while jabbing my left thumb at my chest. "Just so long as you remember I'm in charge, Hookfang!"

Hookfang took my hand in a grip that would bend steel. "As you say."

* * *

Then I woke up on the floor with a cold washcloth on my face and heavy footsteps walking around me. "Hunh – Hookfang?" My voice came out garbled.

"Next time you decide to take a steam bath, open the window."

It wasn't Hookfang; it was Uncle Stoik. I sat up slowly and scrubbed my face with the cloth; then I looked around.

"Where'd the tiger-man go?"

Stoik looked down at me like he was trying to decide how hard I knocked my head. "Probably back to whatever circus he escaped from."

I tried to stand up and nearly fell on my face. "You really didn't see a tiger-man?"

Stoik pulled me back to my feet. "No. And before you ask, I didn't hear anyone enter or leave this house since you arrived." He turned his fierce gaze at me. "And I _would_ have heard someone."

_So what – I dreamed that?_ The more I thought about the strange encounter, the less sense it made. _Well…I guess it was a dream._ Brought on by the too-steamy bathroom, no doubt.

Though Hookfang himself refused to fade away like a good hallucination.

_**Hiccup's POV**_

"Really, Hookfang? You actually thought turning the bathroom into a sauna was more subtle than just teleporting in on Scott while he was asleep? What if someone – other than me – had walked in on you while you were still linking up?"

Hookfang ignored me. He was too busy contemplating his claws and tail – and he seemed _very_ smug. Probably because he was the first of the new dragons to have a human's dreamscape augmenting his own.

"At least _you_ were the one to catch him in the act," Astrid reminded me.

Toothless nudged my mind, pointing out that Hookfang _did_ follow my orders. No one saw him, unless you counted Scott's dream, and he'd appeared as a human in that dream. So what was the problem?

"The _problem_ is that he took a _massive_ risk and that he decided to do it while Astrid and I were getting breakfast!" Then I shook my head. "But…at least he has confidence."

Astrid looked at the mirror. "By the way, where are the others?"

"The twins are off chasing another set of twins."

"They're…oh gods, no."

"Oh, yeah." The conjoined twins had fixated on one point of Ruth's and Tully's dossiers: the part where the two of them are twins. And, near as I could figure, they stopped there. I wondered if they would approve or be horrified when they actually connected to the twins and discovered their love of destruction. "As for Meatlug, she's stalking Fisher; I can't wait to see the result of that."

"You know him better than I do. Would he accept an overweight girl just as she is?"

I shrugged. "_His_ preferences never came up when we talked, but I think so."

Astrid was quiet for a second. Then, before I could ask what was wrong, she made a face that was…somewhere between a smirk and a flirty expression…and she batted her eyes at me. "Let me guess, you two were mostly talking about me?"

I laughed – painfully – and shrugged. "That type of conversation mostly consisted of Fisher reciting the impossibly high odds against you and me hooking up. It wasn't exactly…" then I promptly forgot _what_ it "exactly wasn't" as Astrid kissed me.

By the time she let me go, I was no longer sure what we had just been discussing. Amazing what this girl does to my brain, right?

Hookfang suddenly made a gagging noise, his jaws sliding forwards and his teeth jutting out.

"No one asked you," I informed him, turning my back and getting my crutches.

Astrid just snickered.

* * *

_**Author's Note:** special shout-outs in the next chapter for everyone who recognizes what inspired Hookfang's human form._


End file.
